The Uttar Pradesh government is putting in a clause in its Resettlement and Rehabilitation policy that will make it obligatory for the Centre as well as the central public sector units to offer the same benefits to land owners as those the state government follows. The state government plans to confront the centre on land compensation rules.
While no state government rule can override a Central government law, the move will definitely create a moral pressure on the Centre. ?The deft move by the state government will ensure that the Centre and the PSU follow suit as they cannot afford to look anti-farmer on the one hand or give the Mayawati government the opportunity to score brownie points on the tricky issue of farmers,? said a member of an industry chamber in the state.
According to sources, a decision to this effect was taken at the first meeting held by the committee formed to monitor the new R&R policy. The committee, headed by the chief secretary and including representatives of all important department such as revenue, finance, law, infrastructure development as well as industry also decided to outsource the disbursement of the 33 years of annuity, as envisaged in the new policy.
It is also mulling over the idea of not providing state support to those projects that do not follow the state government?s R&R Policy. It may be mentioned that the state support ensures support in the matters of land acquisition, providing right of way, removal of encroachments, shifting of utilities, rehabilitation and maintaining local law and order and so on. This understanding is regarded important as it gives confidence to the concessionaires and lenders of big-ticket projects and enables them reach faster financial closure.
Hitherto, the Centre and the PSUs acquired land for their projects and paid the farmers as per their own laws and rates, which are lower than what is offered to the farmers by the state government.
Under the new land acqusition policy, every farmer who loses all his land gets Rs 1.85 lakh per acre, for the next 5 years. Others have a choice of taking an annuity of Rs 20,000 per acre for the next 33 years, or taking Rs. 2.4 lakh per acre as a one-time pay-off. This one-time payment can now be disbursed by the insurance companies or financial institutions,? he stated.