The Land bill 2015
Draft of the State 2015So what is the Land Acquisition Bill 2015 and why is it shaped by the Indian print media as the Anti Farmer-Pro Industrieist Bill?
I would disagree with the replies given here - I am against the Land Acquisition Regulation, 2014. There are two reasons why I am opposed to the regulation: a) Firstly, because it is a regulation. Under the Constitution, while the right to issue a decree is in the power of the central government, the Supreme Court has, as Dr Ambedkar declared during his lifetime when drawing up the Constitution, that such a right should only be exerted in an emergencies.
Firstly, the first is that the emergency was because, according to 105 (3) of the 2013 Act, 13 land purchase classes (mentioned in the 4th list of the Act) had been exempt from indemnity, remediation and relocation provisions, and that this had to be done within one year of the announcement of the Act.
As the President of the European Union informed the Commission of the initial act on 1 January 2014, a notice was required to implement this part of the first one. At first, it did not even need a regulation, let alone a law, to be tabled in Parliament.
Secondly, the Land Acquisition Regulation addresses issues that have nothing to do with this particular section of the Act. As an example, the exemption clause for 5 other project types from the SIA or the clause that dilutes the provisions of the initial law that multicultures may only be purchased as a last resort are not things that had to be incorporated into such a regulation if this was the cause for the adoption of the regulation in emergencies.
Then the central government gave its second justification for the land purchase transaction - the industry, and therefore the necessary measures were taken. The Centre considered that this regulation was necessary because the law hindered/impeded certain aspects of the country's economical development by raising the costs of acquiring land and making it more cumbersome for companies in the retail industry to make investment that could make the country's economies younger.
The Centre's point is torn down on the basis that the country is not in a state of financial crisis in which the authorities have been compelled to go through with the regulation. Nothing suggests that this bill was the immediate action that will abruptly reinvigorate investments in India. b) Secondly, the date of the regulation.
There were no case histories to suggest that the purchase of land had become more complicated following the adoption and notifications. So, if the Centre finds that the initial law hindered the privatisation and investment of PPPs, it has no proof to support its assertion - because if there were such proof, the authorities would certainly have made it available to the general population in order to explain themselves.
The ruling caucus, which actually embraced the initial law and of which some members wanted even stricter rules than in the initial law, made a surprise turnaround on this matter without the law ever being complied with. Sushma Swaraj had compelled the regime to use land with several areas only as a last resort, and the Parliament's Standing Committee, chaired by the present spokeswoman Sumitra Mahajan, had stressed that there were holes in the law that was made available to them and that had to be connected.
Today, the BJP has opposed the Council of its own members, who are in cabinet or in special position - without saying what has happened for them in a year to alter their position in the open. c) Thirdly, my rejection of the text of the regulation. We should look at the dilution provisions of the regulation.
Originally, the law stipulated that each property purchase requires the approval of at least 80% of landowners if the land is purchased for privately owned properties, and the approval of at least 70% of landowners if it is purchased for commercial property purchase plans. In the decree, the federal authorities announce that five new classes of development are exempt from the approval clauses.
However, the initial provision itself was insufficient because it excludes land purchased by state-owned enterprises but at least covers those commercial real estate investments, both commercial and industrial, which account for a significant proportion of the land purchased a yearly. This amendment to the Regulation, however, completely abolished the initial law - together with the thirteen legal instruments listed in the initial law, for which no official agreement is required, these five classes make up approximately 98% of the entire country purchased in India.
To put it another way, the initial act was virtually annulled or rendered unusable or pointless by this change to the assent provision. With the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) concept was established to investigate the effects of a land acquisition assessment on the life of the people who live on the land in question.
Pursuant to the law, the survey should be completed within 6-7 month and the evaluation should be presented in a consultation with stakeholders after that time - thereafter it should take into account published opinions in the definitive land purchase decisions.
However, the Regulation has rendered this whole procedure irrelevant, as it has excluded the five above category from the SIA procedure. The SIA was important because it was necessary to determine those who should be affected by the scheme - landowners and other addicts who were not only purchased by land, but also the residents who would be affected by the environmental contamination and other problems caused by the scheme.
Since the relevant classes would account for a large part of the purchase of land for various types of project, this exception would also make the operation irrelevant. There was fierce debate when the initial law was passed that the purchase of land should not compromise the nation's livelihood.
Against this background, both Parliamentary institutions agreed that multicultures should only be purchased as a last resort and only up to a certain threshold. This was also not seen as appropriate by some of those who spoke in Parliament in the debate on the bill - among them BJP - Rajnath Singh and Vinay Katiyar.
The Regulation means, however, that there are no limits on the purchase of land for the five above-groups. There was often great controversy in India over the purchase of land - be it Nandigram/Singur or Andhra Pradesh. In the light of all this, it seems contradictory that such land could be purchased for these schemes without thinking about the effects on domestic nutritional safety, if one looks at the government's position in the WTO, in which it called for expenditure on nutritional safety and other agricultural support to be continued for an indefinite period until a lasting settlement is found.
4 ) Purchase for residential clinics and educationA further big issue of the Regulation is that unlike the initial law which did not allow the purchase of land for residential clinics and/or education facilities, this Regulation allows such purchase by incorporating these operations into the scope of the state. The majority of privately funded education establishments and clinics in this state are either run by companies or government agencies (sometimes both are equal) - and it is not as if these establishments are actually introducing reservations for local/poor students/patients, as the right to education or other legislation dictates.
Nowadays, we see in particular privately funded universities as money-earning institutions that only allow institutions with a wealthier or better background that do not have high education levels. Let us take the concept of reasonably priced living - a kind of scheme that is exempt from the permit and socially acceptable evaluation - and the purchase of apartment buildings.
Similarly, the term "infrastructure and soft infrastructure" is so easily understood as the class to be liberated that as long as the state first buys land and then passes it on to privates at the price it wants, it can be used to warrant any kind of purchase - that is the kind of loophole that has been made.
But the only improvements over the 1894 Act (with the existing ordinance) is that those whose land was purchased will be reimbursed, redeemed and relocated - but this can and will be done without their approval or without having a socially assessed effect. Remark: The exception for soft infrastructures in the exempt project categories has been deleted, but all other rules apply immediately.