In December last year, the Modi government promulgated an ordinance amending the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill, which had originally been passed in August 2013. Its provisions included the acquisition of land for private institutions such as hospitals and educational institutions and doing away with social impact assessments in areas that were earmarked for acquisition. In 2013, when former Union Rural Development Minister in the United Progressive Alliance government, Jairam Ramesh introduced the bill, Rajnath Singh, then party president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, initiated the discussion and listed sections of the bill that the party felt did not do enough for farmers and the poor. He stated that the Bill did not display enough seriousness about the interests of farmers and the poor; its idea of `public purpose’ was only a guise for acquiring land for private industry and SEZs; social impact assessment must always be carried out and the urgency clause that bypassed this provision must be done away with; a retrospective clause for farmers who had not yet received compensation when the process of acquisition was not yet complete must be included; and compensation under the Bill must be enhanced. The official synopsis of the translation of the speech, which was delivered in Hindi, is reproduced below.

The Land Acquisition Bill has come up for discussion in the House after a long wait. I have studied this Bill in details. But I have found that there are several important aspects which have completely been ignored. The seriousness with which the interests of the farmers, the poor should have been taken into account has not been done. Rather more emphasis has been given on cities and industries. Though I am not against cities and industries, they should do get all the facilities, at the same time efforts should be made to solve the problems being faced by villages, poor and farmers. Although the Government has made efforts to make this Bill slightly better than the previous ones, it seems that this Bill has lost its original objective.

We cannot link land with economic activities alone, farmers are emotionally and culturally attached to it. The manner in which there has been indiscriminate acquisition of land in the name of economic development pre and post Independence has created resentment among the farmers. Land acquisition has led to displacement of about 6.5 crore farmers. This Bill has been amended thrice i.e. in 1962, 1967 and 1984 since 1894. The farmers are of the view that their land should be acquired in such a manner that it should not create any crisis for their family in future. The Government should pay attention towards this. Despite the above amendments the farmers of the country did not get any relief.

This Bill finds a way out for acquisition of land for private sector through inclusion of the term ‘public purpose’ in this Bill. A long list of public purposes has been appended to this Bill which includes infrastructure also. This term is so comprehensive that it includes commercial activities also but I would like to refer to the special economic zone. The entire House knows the objective behind setting up special economic zones. So many SEZs have been set up in the country but many of them are yet non functional. Farmers land was acquired indiscriminately for the purpose.

The term ‘public purpose’ is ambiguous. I want clarification on this. The norms described for land acquisition for government and private projects are not uniformed. What was the problem in making them uniform I would also like a clarification on this. I have an apprehension that the forceful acquisition of land would continue even after this Bill. The process of social impact assessment and environmental impact assessment should be initiated in a time bound manner before acquisition of the land.