Land acquisition cost will be more than doubled: Gadkari

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday said land acquisition cost for various road projects would be more than doubled as Centre had decided to give compensation at the maximum permissible level.

"The 2013 Land Acquisition Act said that compensation has to be up to 1:4 ratio. It means that if the collector assesses the cost of the land at Re 1, then the owner will be paid up to Rs 4. Now we have eliminated 'up to' and made it fixed at 1:4," Gadkari said.

"Because of this change, the cost of land acquisition for road projects (already announced) will increase to Rs 1,80,000 crore from Rs 70,000 crore," he said.

"This is a blessing in disguise for farmers and other land owners. This will reduce litigation time due to disputes related to compensation," he said.

The Centre had requested the state governments to raise land acquisition costs accordingly to speed up developmental works, he said.

Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, who held a review meeting of infrastructure projects with representatives of all state governments of the North East, said land acquisition and environmental clearances were two major bottlenecks of the region.

Talking about current state of work across the country, Gadkari said "When I took charge, I set a target of building 2 km road every day. By March end this year, it touched 12 km per day and it will be 14 km a day when our government will complete one year in office this month."

He said the government was targeting to construct 30 km of road per day in the next two years, contributing two per cent to the GDP of the country.