Land: Questions remain...

The Supreme Court has said that nearly 1,000 acres of land acquired by West Bengal’s former Left Front government at Singur to give to the Tatas to set up a Nano car factory was “illegal”, and has directed that the land be restored to the original owners. The Nano plant had subsequently moved to Sanand in Gujarat, where too farmers had complained about land acquisition. Can the judgment on Wednesday be applicable in the Gujarat case too? If so, what will the practical questions be as a factory has already come up on the land? It is evident that Wednesday’s ruling has implications for future land acquisitions for industrial purposes in the country.

The two-judge bench of Justices Gopal Gowda and Arun Mishra have held that the “procedures” adopted by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal were legally flawed from beginning to end. Basically, even the viewpoint of the farmers who had agreed to sell their land and accepted the offered compensation were not heard by the authorities in respect of willingness to sell and the compensation on offer.

After making strenuous efforts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to abandon efforts to modify the land acquisition law passed by the previous UPA government due to the opposition in Parliament over the acquisition procedures. Even the Supreme Court judges have differed on the meaning of “public purpose”. Can land for private industry be deemed a “public purpose” that would justify the government acquiring it? Or should industrialists be negotiating directly with farmers?