land acquired under small or big public purpose projects will have to fetch equal compensation, ruled the Supreme Court on Thursday as it scoffed over the Madhya Pradesh Government’s decision to award a pittance of Rs11,000 to those displaced by the construction of a minor irrigation dam.
The affected families, represented collectively by the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, had approached the apex court claiming proper compensation, an effective mechanism to deal with their grievances and rehabilitation of close to 370 affected families belonging to Districts Khargaon and Barwani, situated roughly 350 kilometres from Bhopal.
Appearing for the project affected families, advocate Sanjay Parikh submitted to a bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar that compensation must be given in advance to the commencement of work on the project. While announcing the construction of the minor irrigation project of Kharak Dam, the State Government awarded compensation of Rs11,000 to some of the displaced families as per a 2002 policy existing in the State.
later, when the affected villagers, mostly forest dwellers, approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the State Government filed a status report indicating that it was willing to offer each family Rs50,000 as per a renewed policy of the State of 2008 titled the Madhya Pradesh Adarsh Punarvas Niti. This amount was ordered to be given by the HC vide its order of July 18, 2016.
Maintaining this standard, the bench of CJI Khehar, Justices NV Ramana and DY Chandrachud ordered the state to release Rs 50000 as interim compensation within two weeks to all affected families and directed three Grievance Redressal Authorities (GRA) headed by retired District Judges to assess compensation for the displaced victims, keeping in mind the escalation of consumer price index from the enactment of the policy till the date land was taken over.