This refers to ‘The vexed issue of land acquisition’, September 23. The suggested remedy of, say, lease income is being tried in the Reliance SEZ in Gurgaon, Haryana. However, it has posed many problems such as:
- There is no intimation of date of payment and the land owners have to make frequent trips to the office of Reliance SEZ.
- Although an ECS instruction was taken, no automatic credit of money due was done.
- Many land owners were senior citizens at the time of acquisition. Payment spread over a period of 30 years often means that the person would be over 100 years old by the last installment.
- The land owners will be at the mercy of the SEZ year after year. They, therefore, requested for lump sum payment of annuity even if it was much less than the amount to be received in 30 years. But there is no such procedure.
As against this scenario, the land acquisition in Rajasthan was so smooth that the land-owners were asking the company to acquire more of their land, which the company could not do as it had met its target. The company in this case was Mahindra & Mahindra and the solution provided by them was that 25 per cent of the land acquired was handed back to the land after development. While giving a fourth of the land back increased the cost of the project, the company saved years in project implementation since it got the full cooperation of the local population. The landowners, on the other hand, found the developed land was worth a lot more than the compensation they received and were also very happy. If this model can be accepted as a model for all the land acquisition cases and incorporated in the Land Acquisition Act, life will be a lot easier for both developers as well as the people whose land is being acquired.
Wg Cdr S K Jain, New Delhi
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