Just a week after the National Advisory Council (NAC) proposed that the government alone should acquire land for industrial projects, the Mayawati-led Uttar Pradesh government has taken a diagonally opposite position, where the state government would not acquire land for private projects at all. The chief minister told a kisan panchayat here that developers would instead have to purchase land directly from the farmers at rates that are mutually agreeable to both.
But NAC member NC Saxena did not see any contradiction between the two positions. Describing it as a good move, he said: ?We have been saying industry and government should have the choice of directly or indirectly buying land from farmers, while farmers should also have the flexibility of selling it to private companies or the government.?
The UP government?s policy announcement closely follows an agitation in Bhatta-Parsaul, the cluster of villages adjacent to the ambitious Taj Expressway where farmers clashed with the police over land acquisition.
The protests have since spread to other parts of the state like Varanasi as well. Mayawati’s move is aimed at taking the heat out of agitations as the state pushes for large-scale urban and industrial development which would require large tracts of land. As the policy will apply only to new cases, the agitating farmers will not benefit from it.
Mayawati said the UP policy is better than the ones being implemented in ?Congress-ruled states like Haryana?. She said UP has incorporated one of the key clauses of the NAC in her plan, which says that any land acquisition can go ahead only if 70% of the land owners in the area agree to it. Farmers in UP will now have the option to choose between compensation for the land they sell or opt for getting 16% of the developed land. The 16% option is in addition to the 7% developed land that the state government had announced in its earlier policy in September 2010. This applies to land which is acquired by the private developers as well as state urban development and industrial development authorities. The new policy will be implemented with prospective effect. Those who opt for compensation will get an annuity for 33 years at the rate of Rs 23,000 per year for every acre acquired. This is Rs 3,000 more than the existing Rs 20,000. There will also be a hike of Rs 800 every year in the sum against the existing Rs 600. Those who want a one-time payment instead of an annuity would be paid Rs 2.76 lakh as against Rs 2.40 lakh announced last September. Besides, one member of the displaced farmers’ family would get a job as per his qualification. The new policy has been apparently drafted after several meetings with groups of farmers who had been invited by the chief minister for a kisan panchayat here. The farmers have been camping in Lucknow for the last three days and have provided vital inputs for the new policy, sources said.
Saxena said the UP government’s plan was feasible to implement as ?central India, UP has fertile plains and the farmers are well-acquainted with the market forces and so can’t be cheated easily.?
Claiming that the new policy has been framed to safeguard the interests of farmers and that the suggestions of the farmers, with whom talks are still continuing, would be incorporated in the government order, Mayawati said private developers who would acquire land for the project, would also have to construct a kisan bhawan and a model school in the area.
Terming her government’s new policy a ?historic? one, she said efforts would be made to get it implemented at the national level too, as the Union government is also planning to bring a land acquisition bill during the monsoon session of the Parliament. Mayawati blamed the frequent protests in several parts of the country over land-related issues to the Centre’s ?delaying tactics?. ?We do not know for sure whether the Centre will table the bill in the forthcoming session, but our MPs will certainly raise the issue. If it is not tabled in this session, we will gherao the Parliament,? Mayawati said. She said instead of building pressure on the Centre, opposition parties in UP including the Congress were trying to make the state a political hunting ground and trying to disturb the law and order situation by provoking farmers.
