To speed up land acquisition for its major road projects, the Maharashra cabinet on Tuesday sanctioned the issue of a government resolution amending the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
The proposed amendment and the GR will help the government acquire land despite opposition from farmers and other affected residents.
This will bring the land acquisition process for state highways, district roads, village roads and highways with special status under the Maharashtra Highways Act, 1955, allowing the government to eliminate the conducting of social impact assessments (SIA) and also to acquire irrigated and multi-crop land.
The GR will now be applied to all land acquisition for major road projects in the state. notably the Mumbai–Nagpur Samruddhi expressway and the Mumbai–Vadodara Highway.
Until now, acquisition involved a number of stages, including developing an SIA, which can take up to three years. Also, the government’s land pooling schemes had not worked out in the Samruddhi project.
The government had tabled an amendment in the budget session in March, but could not get it passed. It had proposed the inclusion of four State Acts in Schedule V of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act, which would have ensured that except for compensation and rehabilitation, no other provisions of the 2013 Act would be applicable. The 1955 Act, being used to construct Samruddhi Expressway, is one of the four acts in Schedule V.
