Emasculation of the Land Acquisition Bill?

It has been reported by few select media news outlets that some of the key provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill have been weakened in the quest towards evolving a ministerial consensus on this draft.

Priscilla Jebaraj of The Hindu reports that the new Bill would not apply to on-going acquisitions and shall only have prospective effect. It also states that the ambit of the rule on requirement of consent for acquisition for private companies and public private partnerships has been curtailed. If true, this alteration would deal a body blow to the spirit of the Bill.

Section 3 (za) of the Bill (No. 77 of 2011) first introduced in the Lok Sabha on September 7, 2011, had stated that consent of at least 80% of all the affected people would be required for any acquisition for private companies under clause (vii), for public-private partnerships under clause (vi) (b) and for use by the appropriate government for purposes not covered under clauses (i) to (v) of Section 3 (za) “where the benefits largely accrue to the general public”. Importantly, affected people had been defined to include not only the land-owners but also those whose “primary source of livelihood stand affected by the acquisition.” The expanded definition of ‘affected person’ was being seen as a major breakthrough in view of the limited focus of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (LAA) on land-owners and those with ‘formal legal rights’ that had facilitated the non-recognition of large numbers as affected. As Usha Ramanathan had observed, “Conservative notions of individual ownership and state ownership have been stretched unrealistically to envelop the displacement of whole communities.” [Usha Ramanathan, Displacement and the Law, Economic and Political Weekly, June 15 1996, p. 1486].

The new draft, on the other hand, would purportedly require the consent of only land owners and not livelihood losers in cases of acquisition where such consent has been fixed as a prerequisite. The only saving grace, even if a significant one, is that livelihood losers shall eligible for compensation and rehabilitation.

This report from DNA suggests further that not only is the group from which consent has to be sought has been shrunk, but the threshold level of requisite content itself has been pegged down from earlier 80 % to the two-third.

It appears that the new draft reiterates that the states shall be free to provide a higher compensation and rehabilitation package, over and above the compensation specified by the Bill. The compensation formula stated in the Bill shall only act as a baseline below which no state can plummet.

Curiously, the two reports differ on the identity of the agency steering the new draft. The DNA report indicates that the Group of Ministers itself has floated the changes. The Hindu, in stark contrast, reports that the Ministry of Rural Development, having once-been caught on the wrong foot, is itself pushing for an amended and a more investor-friendly draft.

Even as the GoM tries to evolve a consensus, it would do well to realise that any statutory regime on land acquisition cannot give a short shrift to the basic constitutional imperative of a fair, just and transparent acquisition.