Land acquisition is the power of the union or a state government in India to take private land for public, and to compensate the original owners and other persons affected due to such acquisition.
Significance The degree of land acquisition by the government in India has manifested itself on a large national scale over time, affecting great proportions of the country. In 2011, the amount of land used for agriculture decreased in greater degrees than in previous years like 1991 and 2000, owing this to government land acquisition. 2011 is the year when land rehabilitation bills combating land acquisition were starting to be proposed, but it is evident that the government has been progressively reducing the resources allocated to agriculture in India. Additionally, there was an almost 2 percent increase in the use of non agricultural land in the decade following 2001. Overall, these land acquisition schemes and urbanizing agendas of the government have resulted in more than 20 million people being forced from their lands in the last 40 years, with 70% not receiving proper compensation and relocation. When considering the amount of displacement since the start of independence in India, this number grows to as high as 50 million afflicted by land acquisition, with 10% of the nation's productive land taken for purposes differing from the original intended use of the land.
Legislative powers and limits
Until 2013, the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 governed land acquisition in India. The 1894 Act provided compensation to landowners but did not provide any form of compensation to other persons affected by the acquisition. The older law did not clearly define public purpose or fair compensation. After a number of attempts, the UPA government was able to replace the 1894 Act with Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (2013 LARR Act).
The 2013 LARR Act focuses on providing not only compensation to the land owners, but also extend rehabilitation and resettlement benefits to livelihood looser from the land, which shall be in addition to the minimum compensation. The minimum compensation to be paid to the land owners is based on a multiple of market value and other factors laid down in the Act. The Act forbids or regulates land acquisition when such acquisition would include multi-crop irrigated area. The Act changed the norms for acquisition of land for use by private companies or in case of public-private partnerships, including compulsory approval of 80% of the landowners. The Act also introduced changes in the land acquisition process, including a compulsory social-impact study, which need to be conducted before an acquisition is made.
The new law, also has some serious shortcomings as regards its provisions for socioeconomic impact assessment and it has also bypassed the constitutional local self governments by not recognizing them as "appropriate governments" in matters of land acquisition.Guha, A. (2012). Social Impact Assessment in the Draft Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011: A Critical Overview'. In 'Anthropological Impact Assessment of Development Initiatives'. (2012) Eds. A.K. Danda, K.K. Basa, K.K. Misra. Jhargram: Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologists.
The 2013 LARR Act becoming applicable across India, from 1 January 2014.
In addition to the 2013 LARR Act, other laws govern the land acquisition process the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 the Damodar Valley Corporation Act, 1948 the Indian Tramways Act, 1886 the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, 1885 the Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978 the National Highways Act, 1956 the Petroleum and Minerals Pipelines (Acquisition of Right of User of Land) Act, 1962 the Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property Act, 1952 the Resettlement of Displaced Persons (Land Acquisition) Act, 1948 the Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development Act, 1957 the Electricity Act, 2003 the Railways Act, 1989
On 31 December 2013, the President of India promulgated an ordinance with an official mandate to "meet the twin objectives of farmer welfare; along with expeditiously meeting the strategic and developmental needs of the country". An amendment bill was then introduced in Parliament to endorse the Ordinance. Lok Sabha passed the bill, which awaits passage by the Rajya Sabha. On 30 May 2015, President of India promulgated the amendment ordinance for third time.
The land acquisition in Jammu and Kashmir was governed by the Jammu and Kashmir Land Acquisition Act, 1934 until 31 October 2019, when The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 extended 2013 LARR Act and repealed the state law.
Proposed Amendments
The current Narendra Modi led National Democratic Alliance government driven Land Acquisition Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha on 10 March 2015 has seen a tough resistance from key position parties in India who have called the proposed amendments "anti farmer" and "anti poor". The proposed amendments remove requirements for approval from farmers to proceed with land acquisition under five broad categories of projects. While the bill was passed in Lok Sabha, it still needs approval from the Rajya Sabha, where the current government does not have a majority, for the proposed amendments to become effective.
The following were the main disputation points:
the removal of the consent clause, which requires "approval of the 70% of the land owners for PPP projects and 80% for the private entities", for certain purposes such as industrial corridors, public-private-partnership (PPP) projects, rural infrastructure, affordable housing and defense projects the removal of social assessment before land acquisition for the purposes listed above the removing the limit of 5 years for return of un-utilised land the expansion of land acquisition to other private entities the requirement of prior sanction from the government to prosecute wrongdoing by any government official conducts any wrongdoing
The amendment bill was strong opposed by opposition parties, farmers, labour unions and other stakeholders.
Issues Some of the important issues surrounding the Land Acquisition are discussed below.
Eminent Domain The power to take property from the individual is rooted in the idea of eminent domain. The doctrine of eminent domain states, the sovereign can do anything, if the act of sovereign involves public interest. The doctrine empowers the sovereign to acquire private land for a public use, provided the public nature of the usage can be demonstrated beyond doubt. The doctrine is based on the following two Latin maxims, (1) Salus populi suprema lex (Welfare of the People Is the Paramount Law) and (2) Necessitas publica major est quam (Public Necessity Is Greater Than Private Necessity).Chandrachur, Y. V. 2009. Concise Law Dictionary. New Delhi: LexisNexis Butterworths Wadhwa Nagpur. In the history of modern India, this doctrine was challenged twice (broadly speaking) once when land reform was initiated and another time when Banks were nationalized.Tripathi, P.K. 1980. "Right of Property After 44th Amendment Better Prosecuted Than Ever Before."Air Journal (51).
The Constitution of India originally provided the right to property is a legal right under government only (which includes land) under Articles 19 and 31. Article 19 guaranteed that all citizens have the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. Article 31 stated that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law." It also indicated that compensation would be paid to a person whose property has been taken for public purposes (often subject to wide range of meaning). The Forty-Fourth Amendment of 1978 deleted the right to property from the list of fundamental rights with an introduction of a new provision, Article 300-A, which provided that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law" (Constitution 44th Amendment, w.e.f. 10.6.1979). The amendment ensured that the right to property‟ is no longer a fundamental right but rather a constitutional/legal right/as a statutory right and in the event of breach, the remedy available to an aggrieved person is through the High Court under Article 226 of the Indian Constitution and not the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution. State must pay compensation at the market value for such land, building or structure acquired (Inserted by Constitution, Seventeenth Amendment) Act, 1964, the same can be found in the earlier rulings when property right was a fundamental right (such as 1954 AIR 170, 1954 SCR 558, which propounded that the word "Compensation" deployed in Article 31(2) implied full compensation, that is the market value of the property at the time of the acquisition. The Legislature must "ensure that what is determined as payable must be compensation, that is, a just equivalent of what the owner has been deprived of"). Elsewhere, Justice O Chinnappa Reddy ruled (State Of Maharashtra v. Chandrabhan Tale on 7 July 1983) that the fundamental right to property has been abolished because of its incompatibility with the goals of "justice" social, economic and political and "equality of status and of opportunity" and with the establishment of "a socialist democratic republic, as contemplated by the Constitution. There is no reason why a new concept of property should be introduced in the place of the old so as to bring in its wake the vestiges of the doctrine of Laissez Faire and create, in the name of efficiency, a new oligarchy. Efficiency has many facets and one is yet to discover an infallible test of efficiency to suit the widely differing needs of a developing society such as ours" (1983 AIR 803, 1983 SCR (3) 327). The concept of efficiency has been introduced by Justice O Chinnappa Reddy, coupled with the condition of infallibility.
In India, with this introduction of ‘social’ elements to the property rights, a new phase had begun. K. K. Mathew, justice of Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala (cited in Bhat, P. I. (2004) Fundamental Rights: A Study of their interrelationships. Kolkata: Eastern Law House.) stated this precisely: "Property in consumable goods or means of production worked by their owners (use aspects of property) were justified as necessary condition of a free and purposeful life; but when property gave power not only over things but through things over persons (power aspect of property) also, it was not justified as it was an instrument of servitude rather than freedom" (See Pellissery, S. 2014. Land rights as social rights. The case of India. FLOOR Working Paper No. 23. Paper prepared for the workshop "Understanding Southern Welfare – the B(R)ICS countries", 24–26 November 2014, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, Germany. for more on ‘Social’ Element of Property Rights as a Guiding Problem).
Monetary compensation
Major Indian infrastructure projects such as the Yamuna Expressway have paid about ₹2800 crore (US$500 million) for land, or over US$25,000 per acre between 2007 and 2009. For context purposes, this may be compared with land prices elsewhere in the world: According to the Financial Times, in 2008, the farmland prices in France were Euro 6,000 per hectare ($2,430 per acre; ₹1,09,350 per acre).