The state panchayat and rural development department and the West Bengal State Rural Livelihood Mission (WBSRLM) have opened around 157 Sangha Facilitation Centres in various districts of West Bengal providing services on land issues to about 27 lakh women from rural areas. The two bodies of the state government have undertaken a programme for creating awareness on land rights, inheritance, transfer of properties and other rules and acts of the land and land reforms among common women in the state.

According to sources in the state, panchayat and rural development department, the target groups are rural families, particularly women, who mostly do not have any knowledge about land rights. “At times, the women are also subjected to exploitation due to lack of knowledge about the subject. There are also situations where women are unaware of how their family property is to get transferred or inherited to them or their children. ”

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In some cases, without even providing the information, the male members, especially husbands, ask the women to sign the documents and get the property rights transferred,” claimed an official.” Apart from this, possessing land also empowers women. So, having knowledge on what is the pattern of land inheritance is important for women to understand,” he added. Considering the fact, the state government has formed self-help groups, members of which are trained on the subject.

These members, in turn, create awareness among the rural women. The SHG members also provide services related to land inheritance, transfer, modification, mutation, conversion and other works that are carried out at the BLRO office. “The applications on mutation and other landrelated works are collected by the SHG members, who work at the ground level helping the applications being made at the local level without having to physically visit the BLRO office.

The work is carried out at Sangha Facilitation Centres, manned by women,” informed an official source. As elaborated by an official, the services were available in districts like Cooch Behar, Hooghly and Birbhum across 157 blocks and around 20,000 applications are being received in a year. Now, the departments are emphasizing on spreading the centres to South Bengal, targeting to cover all the districts in the next six months. According to the official, the initiative is one-of-its-kind in the country and the WBSRLM is set to implement the programme in all parts of Bengal with focus on depicting the state as role model in creating land literacy through SHG institution.