A new Land Acquisition Act has been notified by the Telangana Government yesterday night, “The Right To Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Telangana Amendment) Act”.

Last Friday, the Act had received the President’s approval and notified the gazette on Saturday. The Union Home Ministry notified the act yesterday. The Telangana State government, taking cue from the Centre also issued a notification, thus bringing the new act into force with immediate effect. As per the norms listed in the amended act, the state government can acquire land and release compensation.

Though the original bill was passed in last year December by the Telangana Assembly, the Union law ministry had raised some questions and pressed for amendments to make it more transparent. The assembly was convened on April 30, to include these amendments and the bill was passed in the revised format.  

Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao has now asked the officials to speed up the land acquisition with the new act. The revenue department will take steps to send the copy of the act to districts so that the special deputy collectors will acquire land based on the revised land act. The new act will come as a huge help to the government as it wants to acquire one lakh acres to complete all the pending projects in the state. The government, as against the total requirement of 69,078 acres for the Kaleshwaram irrigation project, had acquired about 23,968 acres through Government Order (GO) 123. With the help of the new land acquisition law, it has to acquire about 45,000 acres.

As per the irrigation report submitted to the CM, as many as 23 irrigation and road projects were adversely hit due to the land hurdles. After the GO 123 was canceled by the high court, almost all the contractors stopped working resulting in huge project price escalation.

SUPRAJA