PUNE: The land acquisition bill, passed in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, has civic activists and urban planners raising concerns about it being rural-centric. They say the government has completely ignored urban land acquisition and infrastructure development concerns.
The key features of the land bill are consent of landowners for acquiring land for private and PPP projects and compensation norms set at four and two times the market rate for rural and urban land respectively. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012 is widely perceived to be necessary to get rid of an antiquated law which allowed governments to acquire increasingly scarce land for a pittance to be handed over to business houses to set up industries. The provisions of the bill will be applicable in cases where land acquisition is 50 acres or more in urban areas or 100 acres or more in rural areas.