To silence critics who rage against acquisition of land for infrastructure projects, the ministry of road transport and highways (MORTH) has sought the power to give back unused acquired land to the original owner.
In the draft National Highways Amendment Bill 2010, the ministry has proposed a clause that says if a planned road is abandoned, the original owner will reserve the right to buy back the land by returning the money paid by the government for the purchase. Further, the owner will not have to pay the appreciation price but only that received when he or she sold the land.
The move, according to ministry officials, aims to meet political ends as well as push asset creation in the country. The new practice will be followed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for all national highway projects in the country.
?All land not utilised once a project is abandoned or when the route of the new highway is changed, will be notified as surplus by the NHAI. Once this is done, the original owner will have the first right to refuse the buy back of the land,? a senior government official said. If the owner declines to buy back the land at the price paid by the NHAI at the time of acquisition, the land would be open for selling to other interested buyers.
The Bill seeks to introduce a two-step mechanism for calculating the cost of the land at the time of acquisition by the NHAI. In the first step, the price of the land would be calculated on the basis of the average land price of top 50% sales (in terms of value) in the past three years. The land cost would also be estimated according to the price guidelines for the area maintained by the collector in-charge. After arriving at the two values, the higher of the two would prevail as the price that the NHAI will pay to the land owner.
Currently, the land price is calculated based on the average price of all land sales in the area in the past three years. The new mechanism proposed, however, takes into account the top 50% values of land sale in three years.
MORTH has also proposed that the person who sells the land to NHAI should get solatium for better rehabilitation and resettlement. It is proposed that the land owner gets 60% of the agreed sale price of the land as compensation for displacement in addition to the land price.
Notably, however, the Bill imposes a time limit of three months for the aggrieved to approach an arbitrator in the case of land sale. The current form of the bill places no such time limit, leaving it open-ended. The arbitrator would also be required to give a decision within six months.