Land Acquisition Act sets out unfavourable terms
The right to fair compensation and transparency in land acquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement act, 2013, commonly known as the land acquisition act (LAA) was framed by the parliament to guide land acquisitions by the government for public purposes and to provide proper compensations to the single or multiple owners of the land.
Land which are owned by the private parties are acquired by government with the help of LAA. How is a land acquired usually? In brief, Acquisition of land is a series of steps starting from the selection of land for acquisition. The selected land is then announced to be acquired soon by the government for public use in newspapers and is given a specific time period before which the land will be acquired if the owner of the land agrees for acquisition. If not it’s taken to jurisdiction and the problem is set to be resolved there. A compensation equal to the value of land is provided by the government to the respective parties.
The purpose of the new LAA was to rectify the shortcomings of its predecessor enacted during 1894. So was the new act better? The unfortunate answer to the question is no. It had many ambiguities on its rules and wasn’t helping the government to procure lands. Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) the two industrial chambers are not happy with the current LAA and are expecting some changes by the next ruling party which is set to come. They argue that the new act may delay the infrastructure development and industrial development pace. Another unfortunate fact is that since the day the new act has been active this year, there have not been any active land acquisitions. The main reason for these delays is the very long acquisition period stipulated by the act reaching up to 56 months. They put forth a claim that it should be reduced to at the least a period of 2 years.
Various bodies have criticized the new LAA and express that it is impossible to acquire land for any public purpose with these impossible rules. Most of the change from its predecessor has been concentrated over the compensation and the lawmakers might have failed to see the drawback in the actual process. Rectifying these drawbacks might bring out a better act which could benefit the public and the government at large.
