The Manohar Lal Khattar Government in Haryana on Tuesday got the contentious The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Haryana Amendment) Bill, 2021 passed in the State Assembly, amid protest and walkout by the Congress.
The amendment, which essentially allows to speed up the land acquisition process for development projects, was passed after the State Government rejected the demand of Congress to send it to the Select Committee of the House for greater scrutiny.
It was among the six Bills passed by the State Assembly, on the last day of the monsoon session of Haryana Vidhan Sabha. Terming the bill as anti-farmers, former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that with the amendment, the government has removed the clause of the prior consent of at least seventy per cent of those affected families for public private partnership projects.
Congress legislators Kiran Chaudhary, BB Batra, Jagbir Singh Malik raised objection to the new clause of award of collector without further enquiry in certain cases, will affect the farmers, as their land will be forcefully acquired by the government.
Responding to the allegations of the opposition, Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala said that amendments to the land acquisition Act has been made by several State Governments since 2013. The objective of Haryana Government is to expedite the land acquisition process for various key projects.
He said that to protect the overall public interest, it is proposed to amend certain provisions of the Act of 2013 considering the state specific circumstances of the state of Haryana. The amendments would strike a balance between the needs of acquiring land and providing fair compensation to the landowners, he added.
Dushyant further said that the amendments will ensure that the existing infrastructural projects do not suffer and are completed on time.
The State Government intends to amend the Principal Act of 2013 to exempt certain development projects, including rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors, health, education and urban metro rail projects, from the preview Act pertaining to conducting Social Impact Assessment Study, he said.
The Bill was then passed via voice vote in the State Assembly amid the walkout by Congress.
HARYANA PARIVAR PEHCHAN BILL,’21 PASSED
The State Assembly passed Haryana Parivar Pehchan Bill, 2021 on Tuesday even as the Congress strongly objected to the need of bringing a legislation to provide the Parivar Pehchan number as a unique identifier number to each family in Haryana. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) Scheme has been formulated to deliver the benefits of the schemes till the last person.
He said that work is being done on this scheme for the last three years and 64 lakh families in the state have been registered in the PPP so far. Anyone who wants to take advantage of government service should have some document of being a resident of Haryana. The citizens of Haryana have the first right to the facilities provided by the Haryana government, he said.
The Chief Minister informed the House that a petition was filed in this regard in the High Court, to which the Court said that there is no objection to the collection of data for PPP scheme.
He also said that birth, death and marriage registration would also be linked with PPP. With this, real time data will be available with us, which will make planning and implementation easier. He said that out of 3.3 lakh government employees of Haryana, 2,98,274 employees have got their PPP made.
BILL FOR DEVELOPMENT OF PANCHKULA
The Panchkula Metropolitan Development Authority, Bill, 2021 was passed to develop a vision for the continued, sustained and balanced growth of the Panchkula Metropolitan Area. A Panchkula Metropolitan Development Authority will be constituted to develop a vision for the sustained and balanced growth of the Panchkula Metropolitan Area through quality of life and reasonable standard of living to residents, to provide for integrated and coordinated planning, infrastructure development and provision of urban amenities, mobility management, sustainable management of the urban environment and social, economic and industrial development, the Bill stated.