1. Is agricultural land leveling handled?
The act of leveling agricultural land can be considered as land destruction and handled according to the provisions of law. According to the provisions of Article 11 of the 2024 Land Law, the following acts of using agricultural land will be strictly prohibited in the land sector:
- Encroaching, occupying land, destroying land.
- Violating the provisions of the law on state management of land.
- Violating land policies for ethnic minorities.
In particular, Clause 27, Article 3 of the 2024 Land Law stipulates that land destruction is an act of deforming the terrain or reducing land quality or causing land pollution, causing loss or reduction of land use capacity for the determined purpose.
At the same time, based on Clause 2, Article 14 of Decree 123/2024/ND-CP effective from October 4, 2024, the following:
The act of terrain deformation is one of the following cases: changing the soil surface slope; lowering the surface of the soil; Landing soil with specialized water surface (except for irrigation lake) or improved leveling, lowering the surface of agricultural production, aquaculture that loses or reduces the ability to use land for the identified purpose ...
Thus, based on the above provisions, the act of leveling of the ground is deformed, changing the surface slope or making the soil surface lower than the adjacent land plot, which reduces the ability to produce agricultural production according to the original purpose of the land parcel or mistakes the soil quality, causing environmental pollution ... is considered as an act of soil destruction.
2. How is illegal land filling handled?
Illegal leveling of agricultural land may be subject to administrative sanctions under Article 14 of Decree 123/2024/ND-CP, specifically:
For cases of terrain deformation or land quality degradation, the forms and levels of penalties are as follows:
- Fine from 2 - 5 million VND if the area of damaged land is less than 0.05 hectares.
- Fine from 5 - 10 million VND if the area of damaged land is from 0.05 hectares - less than 0.1 hectares.
- Fine from 10 - 30 million VND if the area of damaged land is from 0.1 hectare - less than 0.5 hectare.
- Fine from 30 - 60 million VND if the area of damaged land is from 0.5 - less than 1 hectare.
- Fine from 60 - 150 million VND if the area of damaged land is 1 hectare or more.
In addition, additional remedies are applied, forced to restore the original situation of the land before violating, except for the case of restoring the original situation of the land before the violation is not feasible in the field. The provincial People's Committee shall base on the actual situation in the locality to specify cases that are not feasible and the level of restoring the original situation of the land.
