What is Land Acquisition Act?

The land Acquisition Act was passed in 1894, and allows the government to acquire the farmers land for public and corporate purposes like building roads, industries, mining, public and private partnership called PP projects etc.

The parliament passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act IN 1993, according to which it became mandatory to take consent from the farmers before acquisition of their land.

This was done by Congress-led UPA government with all opposition parties’ consultation; the BJP party also supported the bill that time.

WHY SO PROTEST AGAINST THE AMENDMENT NOW?

The BJP-led government has not produced the act with few amendments. The government has removed consent to be taken from farmers before acquisition of the land. The BJP government feels that the UPAs land Acquisition law makes it really difficult and impractical to acquire land for any public purpose and causing delays in the projects.

The government was able to pass the amendments in the Act in the lower house of parliament owing to its vast majority there but is facing strong option in the upper house.

WHY THE OPPOSITION IS AGAINST THE AMENDMENTS IN THE ACT?

The new change in bill does not include taking consent from 80 percent of the land owners, if the land is needed for following five sectors:

• Rural infrastructure
• Defense
• National Security
• Industrial Corridors
• Poor Housing Welfare projects

Though the 80 percent consent is needed if the projects do not involve the above five categories but still the protesting group feel that this is very easy to circumvent the rule. The members of Trinamool Congress, JDU, SP and BSP are all opposing the amendment in bills and feel this is Anti-Farmers