Kathmandu – The government has formally initiated the distribution of land ownership certificates to landless families. This marks the start of a nationwide effort to address one of the Nepal’s longest-standing land reform challenges under its 100-day governance agenda.
The initiative fulfils a commitment made in the government’s 100-point action plan unveiled on March 28. The plan mentioned to grant legal ownership of land to landless citizens. To implement the programme the government dissolved the previous land commission and formed a new Land Management Committee tasked to resolveissues involving landless Dalits, landless squatters and residents of unplanned settlement.
The first phase of certificate distribution began in Bardiya where the verification is already complete.
On Thursday, authorities handed ownership certificates to 29 families living along a riverbank in Ward No. 4 of Badaiyatal Rural Municipality. The beneficiaries included two landless Dalit families and 27 landless squatter households that had lived in the area for around 15 years.
According to the committee information of 1.248 million people has already been entered into a digital database compared with roughly 1.12 million people which were recorded under previous governments. Officials say the digital system will improve monitoring and speed up verification system. Although budget adjustments have delayed some local-level work.
Despite the progress authorities know that resolving Nepal’s landlessness problem needstime. They say the process is very complex because of legal, administrative and verification challenges.
Officials in Bardiya said the district was selected for the first distribution because previous commissions had already completed much of the groundwork in the district, allowing the new committee to move quickly with the final verification and issuance of land ownership certificates.
