UP land acquisition hits a snag

The Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) officials are having trouble acquiring land for industry, which at one time was very easy.

The government notification under clause 6(1)/17 of the Land Acquisition Act was enough to acquire farmers' land. If there was any resistance, it was easily met by the police.

Says an official, "Those days are gone when the land owners were uneducated and one could go and take their land under any number of acts with very little money. Now, Nandigram has electrified everything."

So by 2001, the UPSIDC had huge number of cases against it related to land acquisitions. The organisation then decided that it would arrive at prices after discussing it with land owners.

But in spite of this, the new turn of events after Nandigram have started posing problem. The high price now being asked for the land is making many projects unviable, say worried officials.

The Lucknow Integrated development Authority, whose plan is spread over 2,000 acres in Unnao and Lucknow districts is facing problem due to exorbitant rise in the prices of land.

The budgeted figure of Rs 112 crore, says Sudhir Bobde, MD UPSIDC, may get doubled by the time land is acquired. Also, in the interest of peasants, the central government had increased the compensation for the peasants from 30 per cent to 60 per cent.

Besides, the central government has also introduced 'sweeteners' like the land for making one's own house, money for rehabilitation, leaving aside running shops or schools, Rs 25,000 per person for living etc.

All this sums up to a situation in which the state's infrastructure arm, which is in the process of building a very large land bank, is likely to incur huge expenditure. Whether this would help in industrialisation will be known only in future.