Sovereign Land Banking in the Bengal Delta: Khas Land, Private Equity Leasehold, Transit Value Capture and Sovereign AI — A Companion Volume

This companion volume applies the generic sovereign public land bank architecture of Sovereign Land Banking in South Asia (doi:10.5281/zenodo.23814784) to a single land-scarce deltaic jurisdiction with about 0.045 hectares of arable land per person. It traces 230 years of statutory land control, from the Permanent Settlement of 1793 and the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 to the State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950, a 1972 ceiling of 100 standard bighas, a 1982 acquisition ordinance and the 2026 consolidation of economic-zone, PPP and investment law under a single investment authority. It examines public khas land recorded in Register VIII and its dual-track allotment to landless households and to enterprise leases, and the cadastral and forest-tenure complexities of mangrove and hill forest zones. It analyses an economic-zone land bank of 79,019 planned acres and its private-equity leasehold regime: 50-year renewable leases, full foreign ownership of private zones, SPV delegation rights and a fiscal shield covering stamp duty, a 12-year developer tax holiday, and dividend and capital-gains exemptions. A transit-oriented land value capture model combines betterment levies with development-rights auctions, with a worked illustration labelled as an assumption. A sovereign data and analytics pipeline reconciles deeds, revenue records and imagery, flags unlawful wetland filling and protects forest-carbon data. Six design recommendations complete the study. Written in a personal capacity; the views expressed are those of the author and do not represent any government or ministry. Nothing in this paper is investment or financial advice. Published in the KSCCN series.