NHAI paves way for easy land buy with sops to ex-officials

Move aimed at reducing time taken in acquisition process; incentive linked to pre-defined stages of land acquisition

To speed up the pace of road construction, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has put in place an incentive mechanism for retired state government officials who are helping in getting land. The move is aimed at reducing the time taken in the acquisition process.

Till September 30, NHAI had acquired 3,500 hectares this year for a compensation of Rs 8,900 crore. Since the new land acquisition law was notified in 2015, NHAI has spent Rs 50,000 crore towards land compensation. Land acquisition is the major reason impacting road construction in the country. Under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, the compensation is four times the market value of land for rural areas and two times for urban areas.

According to NHAI Chairman Deepak Kumar, land acquisition is less problematic now as the compensation amount that was being offered to the landowners under the Act is a good amount. Issues of alignment of the highway that determines which land is to be acquired, however, continues to be an issue, said an official who has been involved with the process. 

Kumar said though the compensation amount helped in land acquisition, procedural issues continue. “The idea behind the proposal is to involve those state government officials who have handled land acquisition and compensation issues during their tenures to ease the process and commence road construction work at the earliest,” he told Business Standard in an interview.

These land acquisition support officials are hired on contract basis to monitor issues concerning land under the National Highways Act, 1956, and follow up on them. While the process for land acquisition is determined under the National Highways Act, the compensation is decided in accordance with the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act. 

The support officers are required to maintain a record of performance of “competent authority” that is empowered under the National Highways Act to acquire land and prepare monthly progress report according to the requirements of NHAI. 

The incentive for these officials is linked to pre-defined stages of land acquisition. For instance, if the stipulated time for the completion of land acquisition process is six months and the retired official completes it in less than six months he or she would be paid an amount four times the differential between the last pay drawn and the pension being paid to him.

In 2015-16, the authority acquired 9,285 hectares for which it paid Rs 21,700 crore. Subsequently, the land and its related compensation has gone down. In 206-17, NHAI acquired 7,490 hectares and paid Rs 17,800 crore as compensation.

The land acquisition process that usually takes about one year or so for completion may be reduced to eight to nine months with this incentive scheme that came into implementation on July 28 this year.

The road transport and highways ministry in 2016 approved a proposal to acquire land through private consent in cases where a plot has been left out of bulk acquisition and extra land is needed for project implementation at a later stage.