President Ram Nath Kovind has accorded his assent to “The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Haryana Amendment) Bill, 2017”.
The Manohar lal Khattar Government in Haryana was awaiting President’s assent to the Bill passed by the State Assembly in March 2017. The Bill recommended incorporating Section 101-A in the Right to Fair Compensation Act, 2013 to provide the State Government power to de-notify a land acquired for a project.
The amendment said that when any public purpose, for which the land acquired under the land Acquisition Act, 1894 becomes unviable on non essential, the state government shall be at liberty to de-notify such land on such terms as considered expedient by the government including payment of compensation on account of damages if any sustained by the land owners due to acquisition.
With its approval, the State Government will now be able to de-notify the land acquired for now scrapped Dadupur Nalvi Irrigation scheme.
In September 2017, the Haryana cabinet had approved the denotification of 1,019 acres acquired for Dadupur-Nalvi Irrigation Scheme, but the government till date has not issued a formal notification to return the land to the farmers in the absence of the legal provision to denotify it.
While the BJP Government had justified its decision of scraping the project stating that the three decades old irrigation project was not found feasible, various farmers’ outfits and opposition parties had termed the decision as “anti-farmer”.
The Dadupur Nalvi irrigation project was initiated in year 1985 and it was approved by government for Rs 13 crores for irrigation and recharging of ground water in the Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra and Ambala districts.
Under this, 2246.53 acre land was to be acquired for construction of this project, out of which a total of 1019.2994 acre land was acquired.
A delegation of Congress leaders and farmers had in January this year met President Ram Nath Kovind to demand withdrawal of Haryana Government’s decision to scrap three decades old Dadupur Nalvi Irrigation scheme.