Hyderabad: The Telangana state government is drafting its own version of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition and Resettlement (TS Amendment) Bill, 2016 in place of the Centre’s stringent Land Acquisition Act.
The amendment Bill, being drafted by senior law, revenue and irrigation officials along the lines of Gujarat Land Acquisition Bill, 2016, is expected to be passed in the Assembly session in the last week of this month. The original Act was passed in March this year and got the President’s nod in August.
The government has constituted a committee comprising advocate-general K. Rama-krishna Reddy, law secretary A. Santhosh Reddy, revenue special chief secretary K. Pradeep Chandra and irrigation special chief secretary S.K. Joshi to draft the Bill.
Nearly 10 major amendments are being made to the Centre's Act, 2013 to make land acquisition quicker and smoother.
Official sources said that the proposed TS Bill aimed to do away with social impact assessment and consent clauses for acquisition of land for public purposes, industrial corridors, roads, canals, affordable houses and PPP projects.
There will be no need for the government to seek the consent of 80 per cent of land owners for acquisition if it was for a public purpose.
Though the TS came out with its own land acquisition policy in the form of GO 123 last year, it was encountering legal hurdles as it was not standing up to legal scrutiny.
The land acquisition process of Mallannasagar, Palamur-Ranga Reddy project, Dindi and Pranahita-Kaleswaram projects had been hit due to legal problems over GO 123, resulting in the government missing deadlines in the execution of these projects.
In this backdrop, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao asked irrigation minister T. Harish Rao and senior officials to draft a Bill to enact the TS Land Acquisition Act for speedy acquisition of land for irrigation projects and other public purposes.
The committee held a meeting recently and examined the land Acts devised by the governments of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Rajasthan, Goa and others: he apparently felt that the Gujarat model would be the best for the state.
