The water resources department of the Odisha government has asked all district collectors for video recording of price negotiation meetings with land losers in private land acquisition cases to maintaining transparency in the process.
“The entire negotiation process (of land price) need to have involvement of local revenue officials or land acquisition officers, may be in big value cases, the proceedings of the meeting need to be video recorded. A detailed proceeding of the meeting along with video recording in appropriate cases need to be preserved as permanent records,” said A K Pani, additional secretary in the water resources department in a letter to all district collectors last month.
Along with video recording, the process needs to be conducted in line with the recommendations of District Compensation Advisory Committee, headed by the collector, for social infrastructure development projects such as irrigation and river embankment, as per the guidelines issued by the Water Resources department.
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It was not clear whether such provision will be followed in all other private land acquisition cases initiated by the state government. “The Water Resources department has taken this decision.I can not speak for other departments,” said Pani. Irrigation infrastructure projects have been given major priority in the 2015-16 state agriculture budget to push yield of farm products and bring more land under the fold of irrigated land.
Out of total Rs 10,903.62 crore allocated for agriculture, water resources department has been allocated Rs 6,212.15 crore, up from Rs 5,087.69 crore earmarked in 2014-15. Out of it, major and medium irrigation projects will have a share of Rs 2,229 crore, against Rs 1,985 crore in the last year's budget. While allocation for minor irrigation projects has been truncated to Rs 961 crore, from Rs 1,167 crore last year, priority has been given to mega lift irrigation scheme, where expenses have been estimated at Rs 673 crore, almost double from Rs 325 crore allocated in the current fiscal. In the mega lift operation scheme, the government intends to provide irrigation facilities in upland areas by pumping in excess water available in river catchment areas. Since the government would be requiring huge amount of land to implement the projects, it has been advised that the project authorities can initiate private land buying process directly instead of usual process of leaving it to the collectors to initiate the proposal.
“The project authority may initiate cases for direct purchase of private land since huge amount is involved. Such proposal may be approved by DCAC before payment of compensation to the landowners,” said the letter.
