Posts Tagged ‘travel’
Land Down Under
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Land Acquisition Act
The agitation which began on May 8th 2011 in Greater Nodia in Uttar Pradesh between the farmers and the police was not a spontaneous one. This discontent within the farmers was there since January. This agitation did not limit itself to Noida only but also spread to Agra and other parts of Uttar Pradesh. The trouble first started when the farmers demanding greater compensation for land being acquired for a toll road and other projects — took three workers of a state-run bus service hostage. When the police reached the place to rescue the hostages, they were greeted with “lathis, rods, stones and bullets”, which left two policemen and a farmer killed. In retaliation the policemen hit back with teargas and bullets. They managed to rescue the hostages. Enraged by the death of their colleagues, some troops reportedly beat up villagers, including women and children, and set fire to several houses. More than 200 farmers were taken into custody. After the big fight was over, skirmishes continued till late evening.
The reason behind this violence was for better compensation for the land acquired by the UP government for the Rs 9739-crore Yamuna Expressway and also demanding a share in the land after it was finally developed. In this scheme eleven villages had been notified by the authority in the first phase of land acquisition. The expressway will be 160 km long and six-laned, connecting Greater Noida with Agra. The situation had reached to such an extent that the angry young farmers set a construction office of J.P.Group on fire which led to clashes between them and security forces. Police and administrative officials from Noida, Meerut and Aligarh gathered at ground but the farmers refused to talk to them, insisting they’d speak only with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. They threatened to disrupt the F1 track and Yamuna Expressway projects.
It is but natural for the Indian politicians to take due advantage of any issue. Various politicians have expressed their opinion on this matter. According to Digvijay Singh (All India Congress Committee) the Uttar Pradesh government was acquiring land at cheaper rates which was later being sold at Rs3000 per sqm by the “chief minister Mayawati’s family”.”Injustice is being meted out to farmers whose land is being acquired at rates as cheap as Rs800-900 per sqm. There is a bigger scam under which the land is being resold at Rs3000 per sqm in collusion with officials,” he alleged. He further added that “We are against forcible acquisition of land. Farmers consent is must,” he said and demanded that the government take no action against the farmers facing police cases till the completion of the judicial inquiry.” Even though there is an act in India to deal with these kinds of issues then why such violent incidents take place. Even though we have Land Acquisitions Act to deal with this kind of situation often the government takes undue advantage and does grave injustice to the poor people. To understand this whole issue let us first understand what the Land Acquisition Act is?
Land Acquisition Act
The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is a law in India and Pakistan that allows the government to acquire private land in those countries. It literally means “acquiring of land for some public purpose by government/government agency, as authorized by the law, from the individual landowner(s) after paying government fixed compensation in lieu of losses incurred by land owner(s) due to surrendering of his/their land to the concerned government agency”. The main purpose for creating this act was that the land acquisition act of 1894 was created with the expressed purpose of facilitating the government’s acquisition of privately held land for public purposes.
The word “public purpose”, as defined in the act, refers to the acquisition of land for putting up educational institutions or schemes such as housing, health or slum clearance, apart from the projects for rural planning or formation of sites. The word “government” refers to the central government if the purpose for acquisition is for the union and for all other purposes it refers to the state government. It is not necessary that all the acquisition has to be initiated by the government alone. Local authorities, societies registered under the societies registration act, 1860 and co-operative societies established under the co-operative societies act can also acquire the land for developmental activities through the government.
This Land Acquisition Act was first enacted by the British government in the year 1824 throughout the whole of the Bengal provinces which was immediately subject to the Presidency of Fort William. The rules empowered the government to acquire immovable property at, what was deemed to be, a fair and reasonable price for construction of roads, canals or other public purposes. After independence in 1947, the Indian government adopted “Land Acquisition Act-1894″ as a tool for land acquisition. Since then various amendments have been made to the 1894 act from time to time. Despite these amendments the administrative procedures have remained same. But with the times changing one can began to see the loopholes in them. The first is
- · The act is weak and ineffective, and draconian. People who feel that act is weak argue that the procedure followed is cumbersome and costly, often resulting in inordinate delay in land acquisition.
- · A number of projects with no public purpose attached, as in the case of Special Economic Zones, usurped land from property owners, with the help of the Land Acquisition Act, at what is claimed as, well below the market value of these properties. It is argued that, even in the case of projects that are genuinely for public purposes, there is a considerable difference between the market value of the property and the value that the land acquisition officer pays the land owners.
Therefore a Law commission was set up to study Amendment of Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and its report was submitted in May 2002. This arose because there was a need to remove the lacuna regarding issuing of a fresh notification for the acquisition of land for public purpose under section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 which has arisen in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in Padamsundara Rao v. State of Tamil Nadu [ JT 2002 (3)SC 1] delivered on 13.3.2002 overruling the view taken in N.Narasimhaiah v. State of Karnataka [1996 (3) SCC 88] case, on the ground that fixing of any further period for making a fresh declaration would amount to legislation by judicial fiat. The Commission, therefore, considered it appropriate to examine the said lacuna and recommends amendment of section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 with a view to sub serve the public purpose, allow the land acquisition proceedings to be continued without a fresh notification under section 4(1) and render the judicial process meaningful and efficacious as also to enable the aggrieved owner to vindicate his grievances in the pending land acquisition proceedings itself.
Later on, another Amendment Bill on the Land Acquisition Bill, 2007 was brought out known as THE LAND ACQUISITION (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2007 as its provisions have been found to be inadequate in addressing certain issues related to the exercise of the statutory powers of the state for involuntary acquisition of private land and property.
Often, such acquisition of land leads to displacement of people, depriving them of their livelihood and shelter, restricting access to their traditional resource base, and uprooting them from their socio-cultural environment. These have traumatic, psychological and socio-cultural consequences for the affected population, which call for protecting their rights, including those of the weaker sections of society, particularly tribals, tenants, etc., Rehabilitation and resettlement of the persons and families affected by involuntary acquisition and also to extend the provisions of the extant policies or statutes for rehabilitation and resettlement of those affected by the acquisition of land under the Act. Also, the ambit of the expression “person interested” under the Act is proposed to be expanded so as to include tribals and other traditional forest dwellers, who have lost any traditional rights recognized under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognitions of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (2 of 2007).
Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that persons having tenancy rights under the relevant State laws are included under the scope of “person interested”. Hence, the necessity of defining “public purpose”, so as to restrict the scope of land acquisition under the Act to provision of land for strategic purposes vital to the state, and for infrastructure projects where the benefits accrue to the general public is essential. The provisions of the Act are also used to acquire private lands for companies. This frequently raises a question mark on the desirability of such state intervention when land could be arranged by the company through private negotiations on a “willing seller-willing buyer. Further, it has seen that with experience a large number of disputes relating to land acquisition compensation are brought before the courts of law. Quite often these cases remain pending for long periods of time in the courts. Such cases also add to the workload of the courts, which are generally over-burdened with cases other than land acquisition matters. Thus, it would be desirable that the jurisdiction of civil courts is barred for the purposes of the land acquisition compensation disputes and other alternate mechanisms created for disposal of such disputes in a time-bound manner.
Also, it is desirable to make the various steps of the land acquisition process time bound, so that the entire process can be completed within a reasonable period of time. This will be in the interest of the land owners and farmers whose lands are acquired as well as the projects and requiring bodies. Another area of concern in the application of the Act, so far, has been the requirement of providing a fair compensation at market value commensurate with the purpose for which the acquired land would be used. Certain provisions need to be introduced accordingly in the Act.
Often it is seen that the possession of land acquired is not taken over in time, and also there are delays in the payment of the compensation amount. Therefore, it is necessary to make a provision to ensure that physical possession of the land is taken over and the amount of compensation is paid within a defined period from the date of the compensation award under the Act. Issues around the utilization of the land acquired and their transfer are also areas of concern. Here, provisions are proposed to be made so that the land acquired is not transferred to any other purpose except for a public purpose, and that too, not without prior approval of the appropriate Government. When any land or part thereof, acquired under the Act remains unutilized for a defined period from the date of taking over possession, the same will return to the appropriate Government. Further, whenever any land acquired under the Act is transferred to any person for a consideration, a part of the net unearned income so accruing.
The issue of Land Acquisition Act amendment has again been raised with raging unrest over land acquisition in parts of Uttar Pradesh. This has resulted in making a declaration by the government to bring a land acquisition law for better compensation and rehabilitation of farmers in the next session of parliament. According to Home Minister P.Chidambaram this new legislation, would be introduced in parliament likely in July. But he did “not rule out” the possibility of an ordinance laying out the new land acquisition rules till then.
About the Author
- Have completed Post-graduation in Political Science from Mumbai University, Maharashtra, India.
- Have worked in an NGO called Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
- Have written and published articles to various magazines and newspapers.
- Presently as a freelancer writing various articles and submitting them to newspapers and magazines.
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