In a bid to pacify thousands of farmers waging a legal challenge to the Gujarat government’s efforts to acquire land for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project, the State has announced a doubling of compensation for farmers whose agricultural lands are located in urban areas.
The State’s move comes after about 1,000 farmers filed affidavits in the Gujarat High Court opposing the land acquisition process.
As per the Union government’s prevailing compensation rates for land acquisition, land owners in rural areas get four times the market rate while the same is two times the market rate for agricultural land parcels falling in areas under an Urban Development Authority (UDA) or an Area Development Authority (ADA).
Gujarat Revenue Minister Kaushik Patel said that the State government had, however, decided to tweak the provision so that farmers having their land under UDAs or ADAs would also get four times the market rate like their rural counterparts.
Gujarat Revenue Minister Kaushik Patel said, “We have taken this decision to expedite land acquisition for the bullet train project.”
“Now, villages which fall in urban regions would also be entitled to get compensation at four times the market rate,” said Mr. Patel.
In addition, the farmers would also get an additional 25% “bonus” on the compensation amount agreed by the farmers and acquiring authority, he added.
The Minister said that the process to acquire 681 hectares of land spread across eight districts for the project was under way.
In their petition, the farmers contend that besides them — the landholders — the project would also affect thousands of others like landless labourers who may be cultivating the farms that the government plans to acquire for the ₹1.10 lakh crore project. The railway is being implemented with financial assistance from Japan.
The farmers also aver that the existing land acquisition proceedings are contrary to guidelines of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that has provided a soft loan to the Indian government to implement the country’s first high-speed railway project in western India.
Under the project, about 1,400 hectares of land would need to be acquired in Gujarat and Maharashtra, of which 1,120 hectares is privately owned. About 6,000 land owners will have to be compensated for their land.
Published - September 28, 2018 11:09 pm IST
