Govt to seek public view for land acquisition

The latest version of draft law says the govt will no longer have the privilege of acquiring land for civilian projects without the consent of the locals.

The government, committed to changing the archaic law on land acquisition, is preparing a new draft of the Land Acquisition Act that will treat the government and private parties on a par when it comes to acquiring land.

The latest version of draft law says the government will no longer have the privilege of acquiring land for civilian projects without the consent of the people in the area. Only land for defence projects would be excluded from seeking public consent.

The draft law has been released by the ministry to elicit comments from stakeholders. The last version of the draft Bill said only private parties seeking land needed to get the consent of 80 per cent of the people, while the government was exempted from it. This has been changed: now the government, too, will have to get the consent of the people occupying the land if it wants to acquire it.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh told Business Standard on Monday that the draft was being amended to include public consent mandatory for all civilian projects, public or private.

The move attempts to negate the effects of the elastic definition of ‘public purpose’ which has been a major criticism against the draft Bill. The change in the Bill would put land acquisition by both government and private parties under public scrutiny.

The amendment follows the minister’s meetings last week with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and groups of civil society leaders. Since government acquisition may involve public-private partnership projects, such a procedure was being considered necessary, ministry sources said.

The amendments would mean acquisition of all government land, be it for power plants or airports or roads (barring military or internal security purposes), will now have to go through the same procedures of consent as for private land acquisition.

At present, states have their own land acquisition laws. To obviate this, the rural development ministry was building into the draft bill a clause that would make it necessary for state governments to dovetail their acquisition rules with central provisions, said N C Saxena, former civil servant and a National Advisory Council member.

The amendments to the draft Bill will also make relief and rehabilitation measures mandatory in all purchases of agrarian land.

This is irrespective of whether the land is bought with the consent of the seller or acquired under a government notification.

The new draft will envisage the law as coming into force with retrospective effect, an aspect on which many civil society groups had questioned the draft Bill.

Asked about the time span, a top ministry official said that it “would not be on the basis of any cut-off date but on the basis of a cut-off stage of land acquisition”.

Saxena, who led a working group on the Land Acquisition Bill in NAC, said making all acquisition, government and private, conditional to the consent of the public would be a welcome step.

He said it would not create any problems or hindrances in development projects, as compensation offered was six times the market rate. People would vie with each other to give their land and the government would not have to use force at all, he said.