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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Jharkhand villagers ask why should they lose land for Adani project supplying power to Bangladesh -Aruna Chandrasekhar

Jharkhand villagers ask why should they lose land for Adani project supplying power to Bangladesh -Aruna Chandrasekhar

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published Published on Jun 14, 2018   modified Modified on Jun 14, 2018
-Scroll.in

How does the project qualify as ‘public purpose’ and does it violate legal safeguards for Santhal areas? Part 2 of a Scroll.in investigation on the Godda plant.

In the villages of Motiya and Gangta in Jharkhand’s Godda district, tractors and SUVs race down a recently widened dirt road. Even in the clouds of dust they kick off, it is hard to miss the fence stretching across kilometres of farmland, with cows grazing on one side, and trees lying horizontal on the other, roots exposed to the sky.

Inside the fence, Adani Power Limited is building a coal-fired thermal power plant with the capacity to generate 1,600 megawatts of electricity. As the host state, Jharkhand is legally entitled to buying 25% of this electricity. But the company plans to export all the electricity from the Godda plant to Bangladesh, while sourcing Jharkhand’s 25% share from another project, which it has not yet identified. The Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state has allowed the company to charge a higher price for this electricity by amending Jharkhand’s energy policy in 2016, as Scroll.in reported in the first part of the series. A government audit has estimated this could cost the state an additional Rs 7,410 crore over 25 years.

For the residents of ten villages in Godda, however, the losses are more immediate. The government is acquiring their land for the Adani project, even though many do not want to sell.

Unlike private purchases of land, where a company buys directly from willing sellers, land acquisition involves the forcible takeover of land by the government on behalf of a company.

The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act,a central law passed in 2013, allows the government to acquire land for a private company only if the project is categorised as having “public purpose”. This needs to be determined through a social impact assessment – an exercise that involves consulting local people to assess the costs and benefits of the project. Even after a project is declared as having public purpose, obtaining the consent of 80% of the landowners is mandatory before land acquisition can take place.

Adani’s Godda project requires 1,214 acres of land, according to its social impact assessment report. Another 74 acres are needed to build a 10-km long private rail line to carry coal to the plant.

The Jharkhand government has so far acquired 174.84 acres of land for the project, according to the district land acquisition office in Godda. In March, the Telegraph reported the company had deposited Rs 250 crore in the district treasury, with another Rs 200 crore still pending.

The district authorities claim they have taken the consent of the landowners for the acquisition. But several residents in the affected villages contest this. They told Scroll.in they were forcibly kept out of the social impact assessment hearings and alleged that their land was fenced off by the company without their consent.

Experts have also raised questions over the legality of the acquisition, given that Godda is part of the Santhal Parganas Division, which is governed by the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act, which does not permit the transfer, lease or sale of agricultural land, barring a few exceptions.

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Scroll.in, 13 June, 2018, https://scroll.in/article/882342/jharkhand-villagers-ask-why-should-they-lose-land-for-adani-project-supplying-power-to-bangladesh


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