Land Acquisition Act Amended

New Delhi: The President today promulgated an ordinance to amend the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 so as to legalise possession of land by the State in bits after having frozen it in a lot.

The amending Act makes it permissible for the Government to issue more than one declaration under Section 6 in pursuance of more than one report to be furnished by the Collector under Section 5 A of the Act.

To cut down delays which take place in the proceedings for the land acquisition, the maximum period with which declarations can be issued under Section 6 in respect of land covered by single notification under Section 4 (l) has been fixed as three years.

If a project is likely to take a longer time to materialise, more than one notification under Section 4 (l) will have to be issued at appropriate intervals in respect of different areas of land.

The ordinance also validates the successive declarations already issued in pending cases of the land acquisition. Compensation will however continue to be payable on the basis of the market value prevailing on the date of issue of the initial notification as well as other factors laid down in the Act.

A Press Note issued by the Department of Agriculture, Ministry of Food, says that the ordinance has been promulgated following the Supreme Court’s judgement last year in a case between the State of Madhya Pradesh and V.P. Sharma and others.

The Supreme Court held that once a declaration under Section 6 is made, the notification under Section 4 (1) of the Act is exhausted. In the Supreme Court’s view only one declaration under Section 6 can be made in respect of land covered by the notification under Section 4 (1). This interpretation has created many difficulties both in regard to pending cases of land acquisition for public projects and for the future.

The ordinance seeks to remove these difficulties.