The Young Chronicle: For 4th Graders 24th May, 2015 | Page 8

A Counter View : Land Acquisition Bill
The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation
and Resettlement Act is an act that governs and regulates land acquisition. Land Acquisition Act, 1984 has been subjected to several amendments over the years.
The UPA-I had introduced the Amendment Bill in 2007that came into force in 2013. Recently, the Modi government has issued an ordinance to the bill, bringing in huge
criticism from various sectors, including the farmers. The government aims to amend
Section 10(A) of the Act, allowing the companies to acquire lands without prior consent. Five sectors such as industrial corridors, public private partnership projects, rural infrastructure, affordable housing and defense can expand over these lands without any kind of assessment and consent. This has drawn much criticism from the activist and also the political circle.
What I see is that the government has no right to take away lands without any consent.
The members of legislature have been chosen by the people to work for the betterment of the society. They have no right to seek anybody’s property without the owner’s consent. However, it has been witnessed that government, many a times, has taken away lands of the poor stating it as a requirement for development projects. Can
such developments be made at the cost of human lives?
The farmers are poor people, facing severe crisis to meet their daily needs. Hence,
the government’s new ordinance also ensures that only the land owners will be compensated, and not people who were dependent on the land. Such unpopular
measures will have a great impact on the lives of people ‘one way or the other] associated with the land.
Moreover recent ordinance allows any private entity to acquire the land. if any government official commits an offence during the process of acquisition, he/she cannot
be prosecuted without prior sanction from the government. According to the ordinance issued by the NDA government, the unutilized lands will be returned after a
period of five years, or according to the time frame specified at the time of setting up
the project.
With no jobs in hand and no facility to make better living, such changes are likely to
prove fatal in the course of development under the Modi government. To ensure ‘ache
din’, the government must initiate methods to increase agricultural yield, an important factor for India’s GDP growth. Furthermore, the government should not forget
the fact that we are a democratic country.
To know why the Land Reform Bill Could Bring in Positive Change, Refer to the article
which states the Good Initiatives the Modi Government has Undertaken in the Last
Year.