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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | In State-Level Changes to Land Laws, a Return to Land Grabbing in Development's Name -Manju Menon, Kanchi Kohli and Debayan Gupta

In State-Level Changes to Land Laws, a Return to Land Grabbing in Development's Name -Manju Menon, Kanchi Kohli and Debayan Gupta

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published Published on Sep 29, 2017   modified Modified on Sep 29, 2017
-TheWire.in

The new state laws, which are in line with the BJP’s land ordinance, undo consent procedures and legitimise land acquisition with terms favourable to investors.

One of independent India’s landmark legal reforms has failed. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, (LARR) 2013, which replaced the colonial legislation of 1894, was one of the biggest reforms in the arena of land governance. But following the failure of the BJP government’s efforts to amend it through its land ordinances issued after 2014, six states have used constitutional provisions to make new laws. Other states have developed rules under the Act to dilute the rights of landowners and land dependent people in the face of land acquisition.

The major reason to undo this law is that it comes in the way of providing land cheaply and quickly to investors. The LARR will go down in history as the law that was brought in by social movements and dismantled by the country’s democratically elected leaders in favour of investors.

States don’t want to seek consent or return land

Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Telangana have enacted new laws using Article 254(2) of the constitution by seeking presidential assent. Barring Telangana, all are BJP-ruled states. Their laws replicate or reflect the key amendments proposed in the 2014 ordinance. Gujarat and Telangana exempt a long list of projects from social impact assessment (SIA) and mandatory consent of landowners. These include projects of national security, defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors and other infrastructural projects, including projects under public-private partnerships (PPPs). In Maharashtra, PPP projects have been fully exempted from the SIA and consent clauses.

SIA and consent were considered two progressive pillars of the 2013 law necessary to uphold democratic decision-making. Seeking consent of 70% (for PPP) and 80% (for private projects) of the landowners before acquiring their land was included in the law to address the serious injustice in the earlier practice where the state could take away an individual’s home, farm or occupational right by merely issuing a notice. SIA is the only mechanism today to address the impacts of acquisition on the livelihoods of all those who don’t own land but are dependent on it. This is a pre-requisite to formulate inclusive rehabilitation packages. The SIA, coupled with public hearings at the gram sabha, was to ensure that all affected people would have a right to compensation and rehabilitation.

Several state level rules have diluted the central act. Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have all reduced the notice period for public hearings under SIA from three weeks to one week. In Jharkhand, for instance, the quorum for seeking consent from the gram sabha has been reduced from half to one-third.

States have also reduced compensations. The 2013 law had a differential multiplying factor for calculating compensation in rural and urban areas. This was brought in as a mechanism to fix the deficiency in market rates while computing compensation amounts. According to the central Act, the market value is to be multiplied by a fixed number (one in urban areas and two in rural areas) and then a solatium is to be imposed on the value that is arrived at. Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Tripura have reduced the multiplying factor in rural areas from two to one, thereby reducing the amount of compensation that will be received.

The central law had specific provisions for returning unused land to the original owners. However, state governments are trying hard not to return unused land to the farmers by using land banks or using them for other public purpose. States laws of Odisha and Jharkhand allow only for the reversal of unused land to land banks. In Tamil Nadu, the district collector can assess the reallocation of the unused land for any other use with no specified time frame. Thereafter it is to stay in a land bank.

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TheWire.in, 28 September, 2017, https://thewire.in/181933/state-level-changes-land-laws-return-land-grabbing-developments-name/


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