New land bill: unviable for state level development
The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency was recently passed by the Parliament within the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. On numerous counts, this legislation trumps the extant law. However, it is not the most comprehensive and does have some serious flaws.
Deficiencies of the bill:
The Bill proffers ample opportunities to those resourceful enough to capitalize on the situation by simply engaging within purchases and sales during the acquisition process.
Furthermore, by confusing public-private partnerships (PPP) with privately held companies, the Bill makes infrastructural development by the states as well as urban local bodies avoidably difficult. The Bill does indeed throws up some serious challenges for the states.
The major proportion of affected projects would be the ones belonging to the states. The most prominent oversight of the lawmakers is that the Bill essentially discriminates between projects being undertaken by the Center from those that the states are responsible for.
The provisions of the Bill such as social impact assessment (SIA), increased compensation for the landowner along with the rehabilitation and resettlement of the people affected by the respective project are applicable to projects being undertaken by the state governments.
The acquisition process which is being proposed by the Bill is unreasonably lengthy. It could easily consume a period ranging anywhere from four to five years. Howbeit, as much as thirteen categories of projects being handled by the central government have been let off. This includes coal, mining and railways projects. Projects such as these affect people’s livelihoods. Yet, the affected individuals would continue to receive scanty compensation without any rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) benefits. Balancing the two extremes in a better way is not only achievable but would also prove feasible.
In the case of projects funded through the ways of a PPPs, the bias is even worse. Both the Center and the states use these partnerships to mobilize private investment for the general good of the public. Majority of the national and state ports, highways, airports along with urban development projects have been funded through the mechanism of PPP.
Under the proposed law, the Center would be able to carry on with this practice. For example, under the National Highways Act, 1956, PPPs for highway would continue to acquire land while providing extremely low compensation and meaningless R&R.
While, for states and local bodies the PPP method has become undesirably cumbersome and complicated. For instance, in the case a municipality or state requires to acquire land for the construction of a flyover or road which would be funded via PPP, it would require the consent of at least seventy per cent of landowners. Besides, it would be required that all the other provisions of the Bill to be complied.
