Govt to set up National resource center to monitor land acquisition

Under the new land acquisition law, the Ministry of Rural Development has released its first set of draft rules in order to ensure the smooth acquisition of land. As per the draft rules, the ministry has planned to set up a national resource center for monitoring the land acquisitions. The ministry has formally invited suggestions to the rules from stakeholders within 45 days.

Apart from this, it has also come up with other plans including creation of several state-level social impact assessment (SIA) units, timelines for completion of consent taking exercise from the affected landowners, etc.

The main aim of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Act, 2013 is to ensure transparent land acquisition by the industry and the government for public purposes. It also aims to make sure that the people from whom the land is being possessed have received fair compensation.

Formation of SIA units

The ministry’s draft rules also puts forth criteria, requirements and procedure to obtain consent from landowners, as per which, it is the state governments’ responsibility to identify or establish an independent organisation referred to as the SIA unit. The unit will further be responsible for ensuring that SIA is commissioned and conducted as per the provisions for all cases of land acquisition. The state governments get the right of framing out rules in case of the acquisition of agricultural land and multi cropland and the thresholds for private purchase.

What if rules are neglected?

If these rules are not followed then the party that acquires land shall have to carry out rehabilitation activities. The rules stress on making the social impact assessment documents and consent proceedings available publicly. The rules state that the requests for information should be fulfilled within seven days.

Strict rules to all entities

The new land Act gives in strict regulations for the government as well as the private entities for acquisition of land. The prior consent of 70% of the affected landowners should be obtained before acquiring a land in any area proposed but when the land proposed to be acquired in any area for public purpose as part of a public-private-partnership project. In case of private company, prior consent of 80% of the affected landowners must be sought.

Any party acquiring land has to strictly conduct an SIA study. Within six months after the SIA notification, the consent procedures have to be completed. In case of large projects, where the land to be acquired is spread across many locations, consent must be sought in all the affected areas at the same time, in all the proposed areas to be included in the Preliminary Notification under the Act.

The central government must establish a “National Resource Center for Land Acquisition and R&R” and this would be a platform for guidelines and toolkit development and a hub for capacity building, knowledge-sharing, evaluation and learning from the implementation of the Act across states and sectors. This will provide resource support to the state governments and to their SIA units to guide the implementation of SIA, the conduct of consent procedures and other key processes in land acquisition and R&R.

Guidelines for implementation of the Act

Besides the draft set of rules, the development ministry has issued certain guidelines for the implementation of the Act. Official sources said that the guidelines are related to areas such as land use planning and land records which are the domain of the state governments and which are not covered by the Act. However, the rural development minister said that, before finalising the rules, a series of interactions would be done with state governments, civil society, industry associations, farmers’ organizations and other stakeholders. Only after this, the rules will be finalised and then notified in the official gazette, he added.