NEW DELHI : The Union Cabinet on Friday approved a policy for allotting land to political parties for construction of their offices in Delhi.

The land will be provided at institutional rate and the extent will depend on the strength of the parties in Parliament.

The decision follows a Supreme Court directive. Delivering the verdict in a case relating to allotment of government bungalows for parties, the Court directed that the parties must vacate the bungalows and that the Government provide them land for building their own offices.

Under the new policy, national and State parties accorded recognition by the Election Commission with at least seven MPs in both Houses of Parliament would be provided land. Parties with lesser number of MPs would be accommodated in the Vithalbhai Patel House.

Plot size

The size of the land would be as follows: 500 sq.m for parties with up to 15 MPs; 1,000 sq.m for those with 16 to 25 MPs; 2,000 sq.m for parties with 26 to 50 MPs; one acre for parties with 51 to 100 MPs, two acres for parties with 101 to 200 MPs and four acres for parties with 201 or more MPs.

The parties will be required to vacate their present accommodations in government -bungalows and suites in the Vithalbhai Patel House immediately after construction of the buildings or within three years of taking over possession of the plots.

The buildings shall be used by the parties for their national-level units and organisational wings. They shall be used for office purpose only and not for commercial or residential purpose.

Sub-letting of the plots shall be governed by restrictions and instruction issued for institutional plots. The land shall be allotted on leasehold basis on payment of zonal variant institutional rate.

The parties shall also pay an annual ground rate amounting to 2.5 per cent of the premium.

A note on the policy distributed after the Cabinet meeting said the land might be allotted as one or more plots. In case a party had been allotted land earlier, fresh allotment in accordance with the new norms may be considered after deducting the quantum of land already allotted.

The Cabinet also decided to extend the scheme for modernisation of prisons by two years, and to allow diversion of unutilised funds from States not performing up to the mark to those doing well, requiring additional funds.

The decision would help the States to complete the work that have been envisaged in the plans, prepared by them, and at the same time ensuring that the funds allotted for the scheme were fully utilised.

Nod for Circuit Bench

Chaired by Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, the Cabinet gave its nod for the long-pending demand for setting up a Circuit Bench of the Calcutta High Court at Jalpaiguri and for renewing the agreement on the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute for another five years.

It also approved an air service agreement with Iceland and gave its clearance for the public sector RITES to make an equity investment of $8 million for a project to rehabilitate the railway system in Tanzania.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, which also met on Friday, accepted the recommendations of BIFR and BRPSE to wind up the Durgapur-based Bharat Opthalmic Glass Limited.

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