NEW DELHI: The National Advisory Council (NAC), chaired by Sonia Gandhi, has suggested specific changes in the existing laws to ensure equality for women in all matters including inheritance of agricultural land and property in line with the commitment made in the national common minimum programme (NCMP).

The NAC has written to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this connection after deliberating upon the issue at length and hoped that the Government would accord priority to the issue.

The Council felt that access to arable land was an important instrument for the economic empowerment and social status of rural women. However, in several States, the Succession Rules relating to agricultural land had a different order of devolution than the personal laws specify. Here, the tenurial laws of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, were cited to show that the specified rules of devolution had a strong preference for males.

The council members also pointed that the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution still had laws which discriminated against women. It was felt that all such laws should be separately examined within a given time-frame and steps initiated to have them amended appropriately and the Central Government could play the necessary coordinating role.

Also, since some of these laws need to be modified by the State Governments, the Centre could consider initiating an arrangement wherein, in respect of resources allocated under the existing centrally-sponsored schemes, including those pertaining to land and gender-related schemes, an appropriate across the board cut could be imposed in the event of a State not fulfilling relevant criteria.

This could include the amendment of laws denying equal land rights to women and actual recording of women as landowners, the letter said.

The rights of women, as co-owners of property could not merely be confined to land but also extended to other productive assets such as trees and houses.

The land records could be verified to show the entry of wife as owner.

The State Governments could also be advised to make allotment under the programmes relating to wastelands, surplus ceiling lands, village common lands, developed house sites, assets in rehabilitation packages and ration cards in the name of the woman, with priority to those BPL women who are widows, are unmarried or are victims of harassment, the National Advisory Council has suggested.

Under the centrally-sponsored schemes such as the Indira Awas Yojana and the Balmiki Yojana, the allotment could compulsorily be done only in the name of the wife, with priority to those Below Poverty Line women who were widows, single or are victims of harassment.

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