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Mindless land acquisition will imperil food security: court by J Venkatesan

Words of wisdom from Swaminathan commission have fallen on deaf ears

The Supreme Court has pulled up the State governments for their callous approach to acquisition of land from farmers and for issuing notifications in violation of the procedure under the Land Acquisition Act.

Decrying mindless acquisitions, a Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya said the consequent notifications were nullified by courts on the ground of violation of the mandatory procedure and rules of natural justice.

Writing the judgment, Justice Singhvi said: “The disposal of cases filed by landowners and others takes some time and the resultant delay has a great adverse impact on implementation of projects of public importance. Of course, the delay in deciding such cases may not be of much significance when the state and its agencies want to confer benefit upon private parties by acquiring land in the name of public purpose.”

It was difficult to appreciate why the state and its instrumentalities “resort to massive acquisition and that too without complying with the mandate of the statute, the Bench lamented. “As noted by the National Commission on Farmers (NCF), the acquisition of agricultural land in the name of planned development or industrial growth would seriously affect the availability of food in future.”

After Independence, the administrative apparatus of the state did not make enough investment in rural areas and “those who have been doing agriculture have not been educated and empowered to adopt alternative sources of livelihood.”

In 1947, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said, “Everything else can wait, but not agriculture,” the Bench pointed out. In its fifth and final report, the NCF headed by M.S. Swaminathan observed that prime land must be conserved for agriculture and should not be diverted for non-agricultural purposes, or else food availability would suffer in the country, where 60 per cent of the population still depended on agriculture and people living Below the Poverty Line were finding it difficult to survive.

“Unfortunately, these words of wisdom appear to have become irrelevant to the state apparatus, which has used the Land Acquisition Act in the last two decades for massive acquisition of agricultural land in different parts of the country.” This “has not only adversely impacted farmers but also generated huge litigation and adjudication consumes substantial time of the courts.”

Farm suicide

The Bench said: “If the land of such persons is acquired not only the current but future generations will be ruined and this is one of the reasons why the farmers who are deprived of their holdings commit suicide. It also appears that the authorities concerned are totally unmindful of the plight of those sections of society who are deprived of their only asset like a small house, a small industrial unit, etc. They do not realise that having one's own house is a lifetime dream of the majority of the population of this country.”

Therefore, the Bench said, “it is wholly unjust, arbitrary and unreasonable to deprive such persons of their houses by way of land acquisition in the name of development of infrastructure or industrialisation. If the land on which small industrial units are established is acquired, their hopes will be shattered. Therefore, before acquiring private land, the state and/or its agencies/instrumentalities should, as far as possible, use land belonging to the state for the specified public purpose. If the acquisition of private land becomes absolutely necessary, then the authorities must strictly comply with the statutory provisions and the rules of natural justice.”

In the instant case, Raghbir Singh Sehrawat was aggrieved over the acquisition of his cultivable land in Haryana in 2006. His writ petition against acquisition was dismissed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.Allowing the appeal against this judgment and setting aside the acquisition as illegal, the Bench directed the State government to pay him Rs. 2.50 lakh towards costs.
 
Massive acquisition in last two decades has not only hit farmers but generated huge litigation

Authorities don't realise that having one's own house is a lifetime dream of the majority