Land Acquisition Act: states demand review and revision
The Rural Development Ministry has proposed a number of amendments in the Land acquisition act. If they are cleared then they could lead to large scale dilution of the new Land Acquisition Act. It is expected to make the process of acquiring land easier.
Scrapping the “consent clause” for Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects and narrowing the definition of “affected families” eligible for rehabilitation and resettlement are some of the amendments proposed by Gadkari’s ministry.
The proposals from various states were sent to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was followed by a meeting of state revenue ministers last month to discuss the Act. Based on inputs received from the states, the Union Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari stated that a report would be submitted to the PM in the next 10 days.
The report lists 19 proposed amendments, represented as a “summary of suggestions” on the Act made during the meeting. These include re-examining the consent clause, which currently states that prior consent must be obtained from 70 % of the affected families if land is being acquired for PPP projects and from 80 % in case of private projects. It expected that this clause would be removed from the PPP projects.
Alternatively the consent from the affected families could be brought down to 50 %. At the meeting which was held last month, many states, both BJP-ruled and Congress-ruled, had demanded that this clause should be reviewed.
Source- The Financial Express
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