Inundated as he already is with memoranda from farmers? groups commenting on the draft Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has yet another one lobbed by the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU).
This memorandum categorically states that the Bill is only driven by a desire to make land acquisition for industrialisation, while completely ignoring the larger picture of food security. ?Though the Bill puts some checks on the acquisition of multi-cropped and irrigated land by saying that under no circumstances should multi-cropped and irrigated land be acquired, it fails to address the larger challenge of extensive diversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes and the consequent impact on the nation?s food security,? it states. The BKU was actively involved in the finalisation of the Uttar Pradesh government?s new land acquisition policy, which was announced in June this year.
The memorandum to the rural development minister also expresses disappointment over the ?minimum compensation? for land acquisition in the Bill, which says that in rural areas, the compensation will amount to six times the ?market value? of the land while in urban areas it would be at least twice the ?market value?.
?The mechanism to determine the ?market value? is quite flawed because it does not take into consideration the ?actual value? but the ?minimum value? specified in the Indian Stamp Act, 1899, for registration of sale deeds in the area or by the average sale price of 50 % of the sale deeds registered during the past three years.
Under this method for determining the land value, the landowners will never get the actual value of their land because it is a general practice in India that the sale deed registrations are done on much lower stamp duty than the actual rate paid to the landowner. There is always a big gap between the stamp duty price and market value of the land and it will be a grave injustice to the farmers if we relate ?stamp duty? with the market value,? said Rakesh Tikait, BKU?s national spokesperson, adding that the market price should be determined as the operative price of the land at the time of purchase.
?We demand that the minimum compensation for agricultural land must be fixed at 25 times the actual price at the time of purchase in rural areas and 10 times the actual price in urban areas,? he said. The memorandum also states that the value of land multiplies manifold when it gets converted from agricultural to commercial. ?Therefore, the compensation should take into consideration the future price and value increase for the next 33 years as a result of the change in land use,? it adds.
On the rehabilitation and resettlement provisions , BKU says, ?This Bill does not take into consideration the joint family system where sons and grandsons are all dependent on the family land. Therefore, we demand that every adult member of the landowner family must be covered under the rehabilitation provisions,? Tikait has written.