Minister for Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the new Government is keen to take a re-look at the UPA’s land and Resettlement Act 2013.
“We are under pressure from various State Governments to bring in necessary modifications and changes in the legislation since acquiring land for public projects are becoming cumbersome for industry, which from day one had strongly opposed it,” said Gadkari, who was addressing a summit on Highways by PHD Chamber on Tuesday.
According to the officials in the MoRD, there is immense pressure from even non-BJP States like Kerala and Karnataka to review the Act as multiple projects running into several thousand crores are stuck due to delays in land acquisition.
“We have discussed (land Acquisition Act) with the States and after considering their suggestions a 20-point proposal has been prepared, which will be sent to the Prime Minister’s Office for review,” said an official at MoRD.
The Rural Development Ministry has in its proposal asked the PMO to relax norms to acquire land for projects by scrapping mandatory consent provision for public private partnership (PPP) projects and reducing it to 50 per cent from the existing 80 for private acquisition and 70 per cent for PPP.
If the approval comes through, the consent of only half of the affected families would be enough to acquire land by private parties, a move aimed at improving investor sentiment.
The changes proposed to overhaul the law enacted in 2013 also includes removing the ban on acquisition of multi-crop land making 48 per cent of the total 179 million of hectares of total agricultural land available for acquisition. The present law limited acquisition option only for waste-land and single crop agriculture land.