BHUBANESWAR, Sept 25: Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said the new Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act will be implemented in the country in another three months.
Addressing reporters here, Mr Ramesh said the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 will get the Presidential assent today.
It will take two months to frame the rules and the new Act will be implemented in another three months.
The Union Minister described that the old land acqusition bill fromulated 119 years ago was anti-democratic, anti-farners and anti-tribals.
The Bill, he said, has been amended thrice in the past and could have gone for another amendemnt but decided to have a new Bill to benefit the farmers and the tribals of the country who were subjected to historical injustice over the years.
The Union Minister said once the Act is implemented, the collector will have no powers and the real power will be vested with the gramsabhas and without their approval no land could be transferred in the schedule V areas.
He said earlier, most of the powers in the land acquisition were vested with the district collector who was acting at the behest of the government.
But now even the non-schedule areas, the consultation of the Gramsabha is must for acquiring the land and in the case of private projects the permission of 80 per cent people was required while in PPP projects the permission of 70 per cent of people would be required to acquire the land.
Besides this, the compensation in the rural areas will be four times more and two times more in urban areas and the RR policy will be in force where more than 100 acres of land would be acquired for any project.
The Union Minister also made it cleared that in case of any differences in the central law and the state law, the former will be applicable and it cannot be challenged by the state government.
On the reported statement of TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu that no industrialist would be able to purchase even an inch of land when the new land acquisition act was implemented, Mr Ramesh said perhaps Mr Naidu has not gone through the details of the bill as he was busy in attending the rally of BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
He said all the TDP MPs have extened their support to the Bill in Parliament. Mr Naidu should talk to his MPs before making any such statements against the Bill.
The Union Minister refuted the allegation of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik that the new Food Security Act will not benefit the state.
He said 82 per cent of people in rural Odisha and 52 per cent people in urban Odisha will be benefited from the new act. The state government, he said, was earlier getting subsidy of Rs 4,100 crore but with the new Act being implemented the subsidy amount will be increased to Rs 4,800 crore.
Odisha, he said, was getting 20.8 lakh tonnes of foodgrains for the past three years but now it will receive 21.1 lakh tonnes of foodgrains under the Targetted Public Distribution System(TPDS).
Mr Ramesh accused Mr Patnaik of politicising the issue without going into the merits of the Food Security Act.
On POSCO project, he said the Centre had granted all approval three years ago but the state government did nothing in these years and was fully responsible for the delay.
Similarly, on the Bauxite mining from Niyamgiri for the Lanjigarh plant of Vedant, the Union Minister said he had advised the state government three years ago to find out some alternatives as the Niyamgiri will support less than 7 per cent requirement of the Lanjigarh plant.
But the state government did not pay any heed to his proposal and went to the Supreme Court which ultimately asked the state governmnent to hold gramsabhas to decide the mining of bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills.
He said since all the 12 gramsabhas held recently had opposed bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, both the Vedant and the state government had now no other alternatives but to find out bauxite mining in some other places. (UNI)
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