Acquisition of land from farmers for the purpose of industrial development and infrastructure building is an emotive and vexed issue in the country. But the Indian Railways, the anchor of the R95,000-crore dedicated freight corridor (DFC), has made big headway, having got more than 80% of the land it needs in the initial stage of the massive project without ruffling too many feathers.
Take the farmers of Ranjeetpura village, a part of Chomu tehsil, around 40 km north of Jaipur. The village has traditionally been known for its bumper production of groundnut, but the agricultural income was still not enough to sustain the families here.
Despite this, land remained an emotional issue for farmers here. Then, in 2010, along with three neighbouring villages, Ranjeetpura was notified by the government as where the DFC would pass through. The alignment of the project called for 8 km of rail tracks to run through their fields, for which 25 hectares would be acquired. Just like other land acquisition processes, a series of protests erupted after the notification, with farmers unwilling to part with their land.
Given that the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) needs to acquire a total of 11,000 hectares to lay 3,300 km of tracks passing through 60 districts and nine states, it knew protests were to be expected. To prevent this, the national transporter included a clause in the Railway (Amendment) Act, 2008, providing for all project-affected people to be given R20,000 over and above the market value of their land, structures, crops, trees and wells. So Ranjeetpura farmers are now a happier lot.
Jagdish Singh, a 75-year-old resident of Ranjeetpura, has been farming on his 10 bigha (roughly a quarter of an acre) of land since the time his village was a part of princely state of Jaipur.
Singh had to part with a bigha of his ancestral land, which he jointly owned with his four brothers. Though the land remained an emotional issue, Singh and his brothers couldn’t have clinched a better deal. The railways paid the market value for the land, which was around 2.5 lakh, and all five brothers were given Rs 20,000 each, additionally. ?We got a good compensation for the land and we have heard that an industrial corridor is also being planned, which will further boost the value of our remaining land,? Singh told FE.
?We needed linear land for the DFC. So the portion of land to be acquired from each farmer was small. Even if 25 square metres of land was acquired from a farmer and its value was Rs 5,000 then also Rs 20,000 was additionally paid to him as he was affected by the project,? said D Rana, chief project manager of the Jaipur section of the 1,500-km western freight corridor.
In four villages in Chomu, 493 project-affected families were paid Rs 4.6 crore by the railways through the local administration. ?Protests mainly happen when farmers are rendered landless. We ensured that farmers got the right price for their land,? said the sub-divisional magistrate of Chomu, Ashok Kumar.
In the Jaipur section, which runs across 283 km and 134 villages, the railways has successfully acquired 1,063 hectares and has handed over a compensation of Rs 220 crore. ?The civil construction work on the line will start in a couple of months. All issues of villagers have been resolved,? said Rana.
Till date, the railways has acquired 82% of the 11,000 hectares needed for the project and Rs 3,500 crore has been paid towards land acquisition, though the national transporter is still in the process of paying for structures and rehabilitation of the project-affected. ?For the entire project there would be 3 lakh project-affected people. Land acquisition has to be done with a human touch. If you do not do so, the protests will flare up,? said RK Gupta, MD, DFCCIL.
However, the acquisition wasn’t smooth for the railways in some areas. Some stretches of the track would pass through three wildlife sanctuaries, eco-sensitive zones and other restricted areas. ?We needed several clearances, including forest land clearances, government land clearances, permission for eco-sensitive zones, clearance from wildlife departments and coastal regulatory zones, Taj Trapezium, the National Monuments Authority and the Archaeological Survey of India,? Gupta added. DFCCIL still has 1,500 cases related to land acquisition under arbitration and has disposed of around 3,500 similar cases in the past three years. ?There have been issues but I don’t think that land acquisition at such a pace for such a huge project has ever happened in India,? Gupta said.
Till now, on the western corridor, which runs from Dadri to Mumbai, the railways has acquired 5,022 hectares out of 5,860 hectares needed. On the eastern corridor, which starts from Ludhiana and ends at Sonnagar, 3,635 hectares out of 4,807 hectares needed have been acquired.
The toughest land acquisition for the railways till now has been in the Mumbai sector, where 300 hectares were to be acquired in the densely populated towns of Powai, Thane, Vasai and Navi Mumbai.
?The ready reckoner rate in these areas was very low and the market rate registered was also kept low to evade stamp duty. People were not ready to give their land at the registered price and they didn’t participate in the public consultation meetings,? said Rana, who had earlier been the chief project manager of the Mumbai sector.
To sort out the crisis, the railways asked the state government to form a committee to work out the new rates for the areas. ?The committee proposed new rates to which majority of the project-affected people agreed and Rs 600 crore has been paid to them as compensation,? Rana added.
The national transporter is bracing for another tough task of acquiring around 1,000 acres in West Bengal for the last leg of the eastern corridor.
The construction of the western project is being funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency and the 1,100-km eastern corridor is being financed by the World Bank. The railways is building the rest on its own equity and through the public-private partnership model. The compensation for the land is also being paid by the railways.