The much-touted Land Acquisition Bill was taken up in the Lok Sabha on 29.8.2013, with UPA ally Samajwadi Party expressing criticism, along with opposition parties, over various provisions of the legislation.
The Bill, which was passed by the Lower House of Parliament yesterday, will replace the British era's Act of 1894.
Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, also called the Land Acquisition Bill
Companies who want to acquire land for industrial use will be required to pay up to four times the prevailing market value in rural areas and twice the market price in urban areas.
The Bill also stipulates mandatory consent of at least 70 per cent of people for acquiring land for PPP projects and 80 per cent for private companies.
The Bill is only setting a bottom line for fair compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement in the case of land acquisition and State governments were free to further improve upon it, the Minister said during a nearly five-hour long discussion on the Bill. Given the reservations expressed by some States over the earlier proposal to ban acquisition of multi-crop irrigated land, he said flexibility was factored into the legislation. The Bill will now be taken up in the Rajya Sabha.
Voting on the Bill went on for nearly three-hours. There was a last-minute hiccup when the Trinamool Congress demanded that the clause mandating private projects to take the consent of 80 per cent of landowners be changed to 100 per cent, as is prevalent in West Bengal. The State, Mr. Ramesh said, could change this provision, but added that it could not be changed in the Bill, which was adopted with 216 of the 239 members present voting for it. |
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