Cloud over compensation

Confusion prevails over fixing compensation for acquisition of land for development, leaving scores of farmers in the lurch.

FROM the days of the colonialera legislation, the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to the present-day law, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, known as the LARR Act, controversies and confusion have clouded the process of acquisition and fixing of the quantum of compensation in any land acquisition exercise for development projects of both State and Central governments.

The British-era Act, according to experts, did not provide fair compensation, relief and rehabilitation packages. It allowed the Indian government to acquire private land for “public purposes” from individual landowners after paying a fixed compensation for the losses incurred by the landowners while surrendering their lands. The term “public purposes” was ambiguous, with a wider meaning allowing project developers to manipulate the amount they paid landowners. Although the Act stipulated that compensation was to be in accordance with the market value, the absence of guidelines in it left the term open to interpretation.

In 2012, the Supreme Court directed the state to enhance compensation to the highest market value of the land to any unwilling landowner, but the government does not seem to have taken a serious note of this.

The LARR Act came into effect on January 1, 2014. The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government decided to bring amendments to it in 2015, which activists claimed were “corporate-friendly”. The move faced stiff opposition and the amendment could not be passed in the Rajya Sabha. However, to expedite the process of land acquisition for projects, the NDA government promulgated the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Ordinance, on April 3, 2015.

It contained provisions that

THE SECTION of the Salem-ulundurpet national highway where a bridge has not been completed because of litigation over land acquisition, stalling the four-laning of the road. Farmers who lost their land for the project have been fighting for fair compensation for over a decade.