Dharamshala/Shimla:
The political fire around Section 118 flared up again in the Assembly today as the Himachal Pradesh Land Acquisition and Land Reforms Amendment Bill 2025 ran into a solid wall of resistance.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu finally agreed to send the bill to a select committee after an intense face off with the BJP.
This comes after months of consistent reporting by WW HimbuMail dot com on the growing public unease over any move to loosen the most emotional and protective land law of the hill state.
The Revenue Minister Jagat Singh Negi pushed the bill in the post lunch session.
BJP MLA Randhir Sharma shot back and moved an amendment but it was rejected for lack of a twenty four hour notice.
The government said it only wanted to ease the process for agricultural cooperatives and stalled hotel projects.
The BJP insisted that this was a slow and silent backdoor entry for outsiders.
The truth is that both the Congress and the BJP have played their own political game around Section 118 for decades.
Whenever in power both sides whisper about investment and development.
Whenever in opposition both sides shout about protecting farmers and culture.
Yet neither party has created a strong transparent or time bound system to deal with genuine investment proposals.
The present storm is another round of that long political theatre.
Randhir Sharma reminded the House that Dr Y S Parmar had built Section 118 as a protective wall for poor and scattered hill farmers.
He warned that the amendment would heat up land prices and push Himachalis out of their own market.
He said outsiders will enter buy property and alter the culture of the state.
CM Sukhu hit back and said that Section 118 had not been touched.
He said the opposition was running a misleading campaign.
He said that no outsider can buy or keep land and any violation will see the land vest with the state.
But the rising noise inside the House and the rising heat outside finally made the government agree to the select committee route.
The Speaker confirmed that the committee will study the bill and return with its view in the budget session.
The story of Section 118 is older and deeper than today’s political duel.
Dr Parmar crafted it to protect farmers at a time when Himachal had no roads no money and no commercial economy.
It became the shield that kept small farmers secure and allowed them to become partners in the development story of the state.
Over the years this protection built an apple economy of nearly five thousand crore rupees.
Off season vegetables crossed six thousand crore rupees.
Home stays multiplied across the mountains.
Adventure tourism created a chain reaction from tea stalls to taxi operators.
Section 118 stopped the wild real estate rush that swallowed many hill states and preserved the dignity of the rural household.
Critics say that the push to amend comes from hotel lobbies and real estate groups hungry for land.
They point out that industries choose Baddi Barotiwala Kala Amb Nalagarh because of market access and not because of any legal hurdles in the mountains.
Investors eye the interior hills only for scenic property and commercial projects.
Farmers fear distress sale in a time of stray animals climate shocks and shrinking returns.
Official numbers show that permissions under Section 118 have always been given when proposals are genuine.
From 2001 to 2010 around nineteen thousand four hundred permissions were approved.
From 2011 to 2020 another twenty two thousand eight hundred went through.
From 2021 to 2024 the count is about six thousand two hundred.
Nearly forty eight thousand permissions have been sanctioned since statehood.
The real problem is not Section 118.
The real problem is the long delays endless files and channels where transparency ends and corruption begins.
This is why the select committee has a bigger responsibility than just reviewing a bill.
It must build a clear single window system with strict timelines for every application.
It must plug every corrupt route that weakens the process.
It must make land governance clean predictable transparent and future ready without touching the core protection of Section 118.
The government has not defined the Select Committee so far.
For now the bill stands still. The politics runs hot. And Section 118 sits at the centre of another round of Himachal’s power game.
