India, Aug. 2 -- The state government is undertaking a special drive, beginning today, to regularise thousands of slums in rural areas built on government land, in line with its policy of protecting all illegal houses that were constructed before January 1, 2011.

The state government had finalised the policy to regularise the illegal structures in 2018. For urban areas, it was finalised in 2019, though it is yet to be implemented.

The drive will expedite the process of transferring the land plots in the name of the occupants. Private land encroachments are regularised in exchange for the Transferable Development Rights (TDR) to the landowners. Meanwhile, there is a provision for urban local bodies to change the reservation of land as pe...