Vishwesha Tirtha Swami of Pejawar Mutt said on Sunday that he was opposed to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015, tabled by the Union government in Parliament.
Speaking to presspersons at Kemmannu village here, the seer said that he had made his opposition to the ordinance (now introduced as a Bill) clear to the Union government. If the Bill became an Act, it would result in farmers losing their fertile land. The consent clause and Social Impact Assessment had been removed from the proposed new law, he added.
With the change, the government or private companies do not need the mandatory 80 per cent consent of farmers or SIA for land acquisition in sectors such as national security, defence, rural infrastructure including electrification, industrial corridors and housing for the poor.
In the earlier law, besides the land owners, all those dependent on the land, had to be compensated. But as per the ordinance, only land owners would be compensated. The new law did not make any distinction between fertile and fallow lands.
