Dholera Special Investment Region

The Land Acquisition Bill – Fact Sheet , that aims at understanding the Bill in detail and in a manner that layman can understand is an initiative by the BEST COMPANY REAL ESTATE industry consists of.  In this concluding part, the Part 3 let us have a look at some more features, the criticism and most importantly the pros and cons in a nutshell.

                                                         

Dholera SIR

What is public purpose for land acquisition: Strategic use by the armed forces, paramilitary, state police; for national security; for infrastructure projects, including activities listed under the department of economic affairs (infrastructure section), excluding private hospitals, private education institutions and private hotels; projects related to industrial corridors, mining, national investment and manufacturing zone, sports, healthcare, tourism and space programmes; housing projects for income groups specified by government, projects planned for development of village sites, residential areas for lower income groups in urban areas; projects involving agro-processing, warehousing, cold storage, marketing infrastructure, dairy, fisheries and meat processing cooperatives

Pre-condition for acquiring: For a private entity or a PPP project, state has to conduct a social impact assessment (SIA) and an environmental impact assessment (EIA), to identify the families who would be affected if land was acquired.

The private entity seeking land must then get the consent of 80 per cent of the affected families before it gets the government to acquire land for it. In the case of PPPs, the entity has to secure consent of 70 per cent of affected families. The third condition for getting possession of land acquired through state intervention is payment of compensation and fulfilling of R&R requirements.

Lease option: The Bill allows industry to take land on lease, instead of buying. But the decision rests with the state rather than the landowner

Problematic clauses: No guarantee of jobs in R&R package; compensation calculated according to circle rates much less than market prices; no protection to farmland; state government to decide if unused acquired-land should be returned to the farmer or added to its land bank. This applies even if owners return the compensation

Pros:

1.      This is an improvement upon the original act, since if the majority of the landowners do not agree to the project to be established on their land, a majority of them can unite and oppose the project by not giving their consent.

2.     There is an improvement upon the original act which did not provide any kind of compensation (monetary/non-monetary) to those affected by the land acquisition process. This bill makes a start, compensating those who will be affected by land acquisition prior to the setting up of the infrastructure or development project, monetarily and in some cases, non-monetarily.

3.    Under the Land Acquisition Act (1894), again no provision was there for rehabilitating or resettlement of those who would be losing their ownership of land or livelihoods associated with the land acquired for any project. 

Cons: 

1.      If a private project developer wants to escape this clause, he/she will take land in multiple parcels instead of one-time acquisition, which helps him or her escape the application of this Act.

2.     A large amount of land is acquired even today by public sector units like NTPC, BHEL or others. Yet, no public consent is required by public sector units in acquiring land, be it for mining, for power projects, for highway building or for any other purpose. This is still a failure of this act and the demand of those protesting against the previous act has still not been met in totality. 

3.     There is no making of the provisions as mandatory, and the project developer can say that he/she is not in a position to do so with reasons, the project developer is not mandated really to provide these provisions. 

Like in everything, this also has its fair share of Pros and Cons, the application over the years and the cases that follow will judge the failure and success ratio of it. For more such useful updates on REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT PROPERTY,  keep watching this space.