Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act

Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act

The Gujarat government has announced that it would place parts of Khambhat, a town in Anand district under the Disturbed Areas (DA) Act due to the recent communal violence outbreaks in the town.

• The Act, also known as the Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act, 1991, aims at preventing distress sale of properties in communally-sensitive areas.
• Under this Act, the permission of the district collector is mandatory for the sale or transfer of property in the areas notified as “disturbed” to ensure that the sale was not out of any distress or compulsion, and to see that the seller had received a fair price.
• The Act is currently in force in parts of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bharuch, Kapadvanj, Anand and Godhra towns.
• The DA Act was first introduced in Ahmedabad in 1986 to check the large scale distress sale of properties mainly by people of a particular community due to continuous riots in Ahmedabad.
• The then Gujarat Chief Minister brought in an ordinance which was later converted into the DA Act in 1991.
• However, the focus of the Act has changed from checking the distress sale of properties to checking polarisation of disturbed areas through the transfer of properties by alleged coercive means.

Source: Indian Express