Economic
Times: New Delhi: Friday, 08 May 2015.
The
government wants land acquisition rules eased for five categories on the
grounds that this is critical to India's development as part of the fiercely
disputed amendments it wants to make to the law. An analysis of data provided
by the finance ministry in response to a Right to Information application
doesn't seem to support this contention. It suggests that only half of the
total projects stalled due to land acquisition would benefit from this proposed
change.
The five
categories are to be exempted from social impact assessments, limits on
acquisition of irrigated, multi-cropped land and consent provisions. The
categories are defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial
corridors and infrastructure and social infrastructure.
But out of 66
projects stalled due to land acquisition problems, only 36 (or 54%) would
benefit from such a move, based on the RTI response data.
This is the
second in a series of reports based on the finance ministry's reply to activist
Venkatesh Nayak's RTI application. In the first of these on April 28, ET
reported that a total of 804 projects had been stalled across India and of
these only 66 or 8% were affected because of land acquisition. Of these 66, 34
are in the infrastructure and social infrastructure category (including public
private participation projects), while there's one each in rural infrastructure
and affordable housing. But there are none in the areas of defence or
industrial corridors, although BJP-led government's representatives have made
statements to the contrary.
"(One)
can't get land for any defence projects. That is one of the most challenging
things," Finance MinisterArun Jaitley was cited by agencies as telling
students and teachers at New York's Columbia University in March. "Some of
the procedures with regard to national security, rural infrastructure,
affordable housing will have to be relaxed. That is the challenge which we are
currently facing and we will see how we go through with this challenge of
parliament." He also said the government was looking to achieve this
without diluting the compensation mechanism.
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