acquisition of their lands forcibly, through farcical and police terrorised‘ public hearings’ etc.
Particularly in Andhra Pradesh thousands of acres of land is forcibly acquired by the state in the name of construction of state capital and industrial development. The farmers who refuse to give up their lands are being threatened by the police, government and activists of the ruling political party in p ower and thousands of agricultural landless workers are systematically being deprived of their means of lively-hood without any sustenance and compensation and those who point out these injustices are being branded and projected as anti-state and antidevelopment forces and are being victimised.
According to very recent governmental survey, it is pointed out that the agitators of the farmers throughout our country have increased by 300 % in one year( 2015) from the previous year, which indicates the acute condition of helpless farmers being crushed under the wheels of neo-liberal capitalist economic policies of‘ industrial development’ and land acquisition.
But none of the courts of justice have come to the rescue of farmers being destroyed in the name of‘ industrial development and employment generation’. On the contrary, raising the question of the status( locus stand) of the applicants, the claims on behalf of farmers of AP, whose fertile lands were forcibly acquired by the state government for building a‘ world class state capital’ were rejected even to be heard by the very Supreme Court bench, w hich speaks volumes about the quality of the verdicts on land acquisition.
Just one day b efore the‘ Gandhi Jayanti’ and‘ LalBahadur Sastry’ s Jayanti’ on October 1( 2016) the incident occurred at,
Nov 2016
Dodikala of Barkagaon, 30 kms from Hazirabagh town in Jharkhand state, high lig hts the ongoing forcible land acquisition by the state and speaks volumes about the injustices meted out to the affected farmers by the state.
In 2006, NTPC started acquiring 8,000 acres across 28 villages for mining purposes. It had acquired the land forcibly from the small holding farmers of the villages without the consent of g ram sabhas according to the forest rights act. 2006, for the coal mine project to be one of the largest coal block of ASIA. The lands acquired by NTPC are considered to be the most fertile in Jharkhand. But the NTPC gav e a pittance to the farmers as compensation, against the law that orders to pay four times market value of land must be paid by a public sector utilities for land acquisition. Demanding the statutory stipulated compensation according to the Land acquisition and Rehabilitation Act 2013, the affected farmers are conducting a protest agitation, for the lands acq uired by the NTPC for PakriBarwadh Coal mining project. As usual the police of rapid action force and armed police interfered in the nam e disp elling the agitators, resorted to firing and killed 4 persons who were not even the agitators and are only the onlookers. The village is under the siege of police. Such is the justice meted out by the state to land acquisition affected farmers; and no verdict of Supreme Court is com ing to the rescue of the affected farmers. This has been the stark reality of the experiences of farmers whose land is being acquired forcibly by the state.
Even the present supreme court judgment is not based on policy or principle of not allowing to acquire land by the state for any purpose including the so-called public purpose and development or on any such rule of law without the consent of its owners; but only based on non-compliance of certain law stipulated land acquisition procedures by concerned administrative authorities; which in other terms means if all the procedural formalities are complied the land can be acquired by the state without any objection. The justices only discussed about the questions of‘ infringement of rights of farmers’ and the questions of‘ public purpose’ with an academic zeal through their separate judgments, but were in fullagreement on the technicality of compliance of procedures of law stipulated methods and avoidance of procedural lapses. They have not questioned or acted on the merits of the policy of land acq uisition from the farmers, depriving them of their livelyhoods. The verdict had not quashed the very policy of land acquisition by the state.
So one need not have illusions that the Supreme Court verdict on Singur land acquisition will come in rescue of the farmers whose lands are being forcibly acquired by the state under land acquisition act 2013 or any similar act like land pooling act of A. P, which is being lauded by the central and other state governments.
It is only the unity and the spirit of fighting in protection of their lands of the farmers throughout the country that would be instrumental in protecting their rights.
Hence the verdict on Singur cannot be viewed as the victory of the farmers in its broadest sense, save that it could have facilitated the land leased to Nano project of Tatas to be given back to the aff ected farmers- a limited beneficial consequence-who have to hard-work, to make suitable their lands for farming on w hich extensive construction work of the plant was done by Tatas. H
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