NAC panel at odds on new land acquisition bill

A working group of UPA chief Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has drafted a detailed note on land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation, suggesting sweeping changes in current practices.

Among other things, it proposes that the land acquisition (amendment) bill and the resettlement and rehabilitation bill should be integrated into one law that could be named the national development, acquisition, displacement and rehabilitation bill. The new bill would supersede the outdated Land Acquisition Act of 1894.

According to the working committee draft, the new legislation should be tested on parameters of whether it discourages forced displacement, minimises adverse impacts on people, habitats, environment and bio-diversity, comprehensively defines project affected persons / families, provides for a just compensation and rehabilitation package, ensures a humane, participatory and transparent process and provides for effective implementation.

The NAC group, comprising N C Saxena, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, released a discussion paper that is expected to form the basis of the council's blueprint for the proposed law. It will be discussed in detail at the full meeting of the NAC on 25 December.

The law must ''define and lay down procedures to establish public purpose and the need to acquire and displace people in public interest, secure land rights and livelihood of the natural resource-based communities and ensure protection of those directly or indirectly affected by such projects'', the note said.

Explaining the rationale for a consolidated bill, the paper said the processes of acquisition and resettlement and rehabilitation were ''organically linked'', and therefore a consolidated act would ''remove some of the contradictions and also not cause confusion in implementation''.