Land Bill to get modified rules

The rural development ministry has sought the law ministry’s approval for modified rules in the Land Bill. The Bill titled – the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 – was passed only about two months ago on September 27.

The modified rules relating to key provisions, including Social Impact Assessment and a consent clause, which include suggestions from industry representatives have been sent to the law ministry for its approval, confirmed Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh. According to official sources, the rules will be examined by the law ministry and returned back in around a week’s time.

SIA report to be submitted within 6 months

The Social Impact Assessment (SIA) provision considers the impact of land acquisition on people. As per the proposed rules, the final SIA report should be submitted to the district collector within six months of the start of the assessment. Apart from this, the expert group which is constituted to appraise the SIA, should submit its recommendations to the district collector. This has to be done within two months of the group’s constitution.

Then, the district collector has to assess all the reports and the outcome of the consent procedures following which he/she has to publish a decision on whether to proceed with the acquisition or not. The new rules estimate that the expected period for this shall be a month after the submission of the Expert Group’s recommendation. However this time limit is not restricted as it may vary for different reasons. In case the district collector chooses to continue with the land acquisition, a preliminary notification should be published within a further one month.

This whole process would take only around six months to one year to be completed and there is no reason why it cannot be achieved, alleged the official source.

Changes in Consent Clause

The modified rules also propose to change the ‘consent’ clause. It puts aside safeguard against attempts to forcibly extract consent for land acquisition.

Also there are changes in the retrospective clause to make certain that most of the beneficiaries are benefited. The official sources have revealed this while referring to a provision that seeks to ensure that the farmers who have still been waiting for compensation under the old law, although their lands have been acquired, get increased compensation under the provisions of the new law.

The rural development minister had earlier said that a ‘rules advisory committee’ would be formed which would take the prevailing industry concerns into consideration while framing new rules.

The new Land Bill replaces the 1894 Act. As per the new law’s provisions, it is mandatory to acquire the consent of 70 percent landowners in order to acquire a land for public purposes as part of a public-private partnership project. And acquiring 80 percent landowners’ consent is a must for land proposed to be acquired by a private company.

The Bill supports to provide additional compensation to farmers for land acquired from them for industrial projects. Meanwhile, the industry representatives are concerned that by providing additional compensation to farmers, the land rates would shoot up sharply and this would affect other sectors like manufacturing.