One Guntha Land Reform: Maharashtra’s attempt at Legalising, Regularising and Modernising Land Administration

One of India’s fastest urbanising and industrialised states, Maharashtra, has since time immemorial faced challenges arising from land fragmentation. Seven decades ago, The Maharashtra Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947, was created to ensure agricultural efficiency. However, it inadvertently created a complex informal land market in urban and peri-urban areas, affecting millions of families. To ease off the challenges arising from this legislation, the Maharashtra government on 1st January, 2025, introduced a landmark land reform, which legalises subdivided plots of up to One Guntha (≈1,089 sq.ft). This reform is set to be coupled with legislations like the One State One Registration and the proposed Vertical Ownership Provisions. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of this reform, while also examining its multifaceted impacts on housing density, infrastructure demands, and regularisation and growth of informal settlements, particularly in urban Maharashtra. It also elucidates on how the "One State One Registration" and proposed "Vertical Ownership Provisions" (vertical property cards) reforms legally complement or conflict with the One-Guntha land reform. Further, it provides a comparative study, contrasting the MH policy with similar policies of other Indian states and countries internationally. The paper attempts to highlight both merits and demerits of the policy, and conclusively, attempts to propose safeguards to mitigate the potential negative outcome. While this reform is yet to be implemented state wide, this paper brings forth a prospective analysis, which predicts how successful or unsuccessful this reform may prove to be, considering administrative capacity and urban governance dynamics.