New Draft of The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill

Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity has circulated a revised draft of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill which, according to his sources, has been placed for approval before the Group of Ministers constituted  last month. 

This draft can be accessed here.

On a cursory reading, the most significant changes in this draft relate to:

a) Limiting the scope of the prior consent rule - As reported earlier, the new Draft requires consent only of those affected families whose land is acquired to be proposed in cases of acquisition for private companies or for PPPs. As a result, livelihood losers shall be excluded from any decision-making role. This rollback runs against the letter and the spirit of the preambular promise of 'participative' and 'consultative' process of acquisition. Moreover, it does not take into account the phenomenon where livelihood losers have been at the forefront of major anti-acquisition movements in the country. For example, a significant number of land-owners had consented to the proposed land acquisition in Singur; whereas most of the opposition emerged from the ranks of sharecroppers and agricultural labourers. (See Buddhadeb Ghosh, 'What made the 'Unwilling Farmers' Unwilling? A Note on Singur' EPW 11 August 2012)  

b) Abolition of Rescission of Preliminary Notification: Section 15 of the earlier draft had stipulated that a preliminary notification of acquisition would be deemed to have been rescinded where no declaration of resettlement area and summary of rehabilitation and resettlement is done within 12 months from the date of such notification. That provision has been deleted from the latest draft. 

But to its credit, this Draft partially addresses some of the criticisms at the Bill. First of all, it is more explicit on the processual aspects of the prior consent rule. Unlike the earlier draft which was silent on the mode of obtaining consent, Provisos to Section 2 specify that the consent "shall be obtained through a prior informed process" and that this process shall be carried out along with Social Impact Assessment. 

Secondly, it calls for constitution of Land Pricing Commission for determination of the cost of a land.

Finally, there is the enumeration of Public-Private Partnership projects (PPPs) as a separate entry under Section 2 (1). In the earlier draft, these projects had been subsumed within the category of acquisition "with the purpose to transfer it for the use of private companies." Separation of these projects from acquisition for private companies  clearly signal that PPPs have a public character and cannot be equated with private entities.  

Yet, the Group of Ministers must exercise caution in further diluting the Bill. The promises held out in this Bill are nothing but sina qua non of a constitutionally sound and rights-conforming process of land acquisition. Reneging on them would not only violate these elementary constitutional principles but also lead to more political opposition.