Hyderabad: The Telangana state government has enacted its own land acquisition Act, 2016 on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revealed Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in Assembly on Wednesday. He said Mr Modi told him that the Centre’s Land Acquisition Act 2013 was absurd and irresponsible aimed at obstructing the development of country.
Mr Rao made these remarks when Opposition leader K. Jana Reddy argued that the state had no power to amend the Act approved by Parliament, but could bring a new Act of its own.
Mr Rao was speaking during the debate on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabi-litation and Resettle-ment (Telangana Ame-ndment) Bill, 2016.
“After the Opposition parties started obst-ructing irrigation pro-jects taken up by TRS government under the pretext of Centre’s Land Acquisition Act, 2013, I approached the PM for help. He advised us to amend the Centre’s Act and draft our own Act saying that land issue is under concurrent list and states have power to frame their own Acts. The PM told us that eight States such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan had made such Acts and advised us to follow suit,” Mr Rao said.
“We wanted irrigation projects to be completed on a war footing to find a permanent solution to drought and drinking water and utilise our share of water in the Krishna and the Godavari. But Opposition parties starting created hurdles at every stage by approaching High Court, NGT. They provoked farmers not to give their lands for projects though we offered highest ever compensation paid by any state in the country by bringing GO 123. We had no option but to bring our own Act for speedy completion of projects,” he said.
The CM accused the Congress of filing cases against GO 123 in the name of farmers who were dead or left for Dubai few years ago. “The Congress-led UPA government knew very well that they are not going to come to power in 2014 elections. For that reason, they brought 2013 Act with a conspiracy to obstruct new governments,” Mr Rao said.
Mr Rao said there was nothing like gold, diamond or platinum in Centre’s Act. “It just talks about useless things like holding social impactment study, gram sabhas which will only delay the projects. It talks about giving three times of registration value as compensation but we are giving several times higher than that. We took a conscious decision to remove such useless things from our Act,” he added.
