Land Acquisition Ordinance tweaked

Introducing a key change in the land acquisition law, the ordinance has tweaked an important clause that will help both government and private projects.The law earlier said the acquired land would have to be returned to the original owners, their legal heirs or to the government land bank if it remains uninitialized for five years. Now , the “five year“ has been replaced with “period specified for the setting up of any project or five years, whichever is later“, sources said.
This will come as a huge relief for project development since in several cases it can take more than five years to start work. Sources said this change was necessitated after taking into consideration in stances where government agencies have acquired land for major infrastructure, housing or any such projects. In several cases, land is acquired for specific purposes under a Development or Master Plan, which can be for 10 or 20 years and hence there is always a chance of some projects taking longer to get off the ground.
Rural development minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said farmers' interests have been protected as “none of the clauses relating to compensation, relief and rehabilitation have been removed“.He dismissed reports of his unhappiness with the ordinance with provisions of doing away with the consent clause for acquisition. “If I am angry , I do not have to be in the Cabinet. I have ensured farmers' interests are protected,“ he said. Singh said most of the states including Congress-ruled ones such as Kerala, Karnataka and Assam had favoured changes in clauses related to consent and social impact assessment process since it was tough to acquire land for development projects.He added states have the discretion to act or not on section 10-A, which has been added to the legislation keeping in the mind development needs of the society .“If some state thinks that only they are concerned about farmers, then they should not implement it,“ Singh said. He added the ordinance has corrected about 60 “mistakes“ in the central law that was passed during the UPA regime.