-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has tabled a land acquisition bill with provisions identical to that of a controversial ordinance, taking a calculated gamble and testing the nerves of the Opposition that is hoping to build a campaign anchored on farmers. Tabled in the Lok Sabha this morning, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill is based entirely on the ordinance the Union cabinet...

-Hindustan Times The Narendra Modi government has decided to introduce the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015, in Lok Sabha today. The controversial Bill seeks approval of Parliament for changes brought in the law through an ordinance or emergency executive order in December 2014. The Bill will lapse on March 20, if it is not passed during this budget session that began...

-GRISTMedia.com In the course of my work as part of a team set up to look into the socio-economic status of Adivasi communities, there were several things I learned about the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and the amendments to it. Here are some important questions about land and the Act that we should be asking: * What is the State's relationship to land and its citizens? This a key question - and one...

-The Hindustan Times The government has chosen the Ordinance route to put into force several legislative Bills over the past months. Many of these are expected to be tabled in Parliament in the upcoming budget session. HT explains four of them. What is an ordinance? As per Article 123 of the Constitution, when Parliament is not in session, the President has the power to promulgate an Ordinance - which has the same force...

The tribal or the Scheduled Tribe communities constitute only 8.6 percent of India's population and yet, they are around 40 percent of those displaced due to ‘development’ projects. In the midst of a raging debate on the new Land Acquisition Ordinance, a new report brings out many such paradoxes of development versus displacement of India’s indigenous or Adivasi people. The report exposes the anomalies of land alienation, displacement and forced...