Land acquisition may not be a zero sum game, two new studies show

Land acquisition cases take on an average 20 years to navigate the courts

Within three years of the framing of the new land law by the Centre, as many as 280 cases have landed in the Supreme Court using the window the law provides to challenge pending acquisitions. Yet land switching from farming to industry need not be a zero sum game as two key studies on land released last week, show. 

The numbers are big, when one compares them with the total land acquisition disputes under the older Land Acquisition Act, of 1894 in the same apex court. Between 1950 and 2016, there were 1,269 of them. 

The data has been collected by a