“This is a land grab in plain sight,” said Waheed Ur Rehman Para, a member of Kashmir’s local assembly.
Many say that has undermined previous land reforms that granted ownership or farming rights to hundreds of thousands of people.
It worries Kashmiri leaders.
“We want this land to remain ours”, Modi critic Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s chief minister, told a rally last month. “Without it, what do we truly possess?”
But Siddiq Wahid, a historian at India’s Shiv Nadar University, said that the region’s political parties showed “no intent to unite, only to pull each other down”.
“In this lazy politics lies the chief worry for us all”, he said.
‘Where will we go?’
More than half a million Indian soldiers are in Indian-administered Kashmir, battling rebels who want independence or to be part of Pakistan.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict since 1989 in the territory of some 12 million people.
Police have also seized land and properties — including orchards, commercial buildings and homes — of people with alleged links to rebel groups.
Exact figures for the total area requisitioned are not public. Landowners say that the compensation offered is sometimes too low, and some are suing the government.
