The recent Supreme Court order on acquiring land in Greater Noida put the UP government in tight spot. The state government left with two options either the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority needs to re-negotiate the land prices with the farmers and acquire it afresh, or it (state government) may be forced to exercise the sovereign power of the state in acquiring the land as per its new land acquisition policy of June 3, 2011.
Talking to FE, sources in the state government conceded that while they would wait for the apex court to give a final verdict, the first option would be to re-negotiate with the farmers. ?Efforts would first be made to give the farmers higher negotiating power and take the farmers along in the development process by offering them higher compensation. In case they do not agree, we would have to give them back their land,? said an official, adding that the second option before the state government would be to re-acquire the land as per the new land acquisition policy.
?Our June 3, 2011 policy states that if 80% of the farmers agree to part with their land for any project, the state government would then exercise its sovereign power to acquire the remaining 20% of the land. The only difference would be that we will no longer invoke the urgency clause,? he stated.
Interestingly, the state government has to tackle the farmers unrest and also to take care of the other stakeholders as well. ?The development authorities of the state government are working as per the masterplan, in which areas have been slotted for both industrial belts as well as urban townships. We need to consider the fact that there is an urgent need to address the housing needs of the people, who are moving to the cities every day, If we do not plan cities in advance, we will have an additional burden of managing cities which crop up haphazardly,? said another official.
It is worth considering that while the state government may not use the urgency clause in the future but that would by no way stop it from acquiring land for its future projects. ?As far as I can see it, Nandigram-like incidents cannot be stopped only by stopping the invoking of the urgency clause. The need of the hour is definitely revise the archaic Land Acquisition Act 1894 and come out with a liberalised land policy which is also favourable to those who lose their land for development.
The UP Government’s new land policy is a step in that direction but the Centre needs to come out with a national policy for the matter to be resolved to some extent, otherwise all kinds of economic development of the stater as well as the country would be under a cloud and it would also be a great setback to the giant steps being taken by the state government to make affordable housing a public purpose,? said an economist, requesting anonymity.