The amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 were supposed to do away with the dominant role of the state governments in acquiring land on behalf of private companies. After a long wait, however, the report of the standing committee on rural development seeks to overturn that aim. The only place where the standing committee agrees with the government is in ensuring a generous compensation package for oustees. Their formula for the compensation, a price based on the previous three years' market value of land in neighbouring areas plus 50% of the highest price of land sold in that area.

The report which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday clearly does away with two major clauses proposed by the central government.

The government had proposed that the state governments restrict themselves to acquiring only 30% of land required by private parties, that too in cases where there were contiguity issues, provided the private parties acquire 70% of the needed land on their own. The standing committee's report has overturned this clause stating that state government's can use their discretion and acquire 100% of all land required. Rural

development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has said the committee's recommendations are not binding on the Centre.

The second clause proposed by the central government and over-turned by the standing committee was regarding the definition of "public purpose", the basis of all land acquisition made by state governments. The Centre had proposed a narrow definition of public purpose, covering land acquisition for only government works like building roads, bridges and the like. The standing committee has again left the definition in the hands of the state governments. Committee chairman Kalyan Singh defended what the government is terming as a dilution of the proposed amendments. "We left the discretion in the hands of state governments for two reasons, one, because of small plots of land in many states, land acquisition is unwieldy and corporate rivals may use individual land owners to stall projects. Secondly, there should be no discrimination against states where agricultural land is more than non-agricultural when it comes to industrialisation. Therefore if a state government wishes to ease in-dustrialisation, it should be allowed to do so," he said.

Courtesy:- ET dtd:- 23rd Oct. 2008