Industrial zones to have land pooling system in AP

Deputy Chief Minister K E Krishna Murthy urges Revenue officials to treat land acquisition process with a human touch

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh government is understood to be mulling over the idea of following land pooling system for acquiring required lands for setting up industrial zones and clusters in other parts of the State.

Indicating this, the Deputy Chief Minister K E Krishna Murthy on Friday asked the Revenue officials not to treat land acquisition process just as transaction of taking land and giving compensation, but as an act with a human touch. He said the main focus of the State government was to ensure that the displaced farmers and people should have a good life.

For this, there were several provisions in the new Act for acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation by providing certain rights, he added. Participating in a workshop on Andhra Pradesh State Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Rules, 2014, organised for joint collectors, RDOs and the special collectors, Krishnamurty said land pooling mode was much better than land acquisition as it would benefit both the land owners and the developers.

For the first time, the new Act has introduced the component of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) as mandatory before acquiring land for any project. The act has specific provision to take care of the Project Displaced Families (PDF) and Project Affected Families (PAF).

Acceptance of 80 per cent of people in case of private project and 70 per cent in case of project being taken up by the government under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode has been made mandatory in the new Act. R&R component has been made mandatory for every project that requires 5,000 or more acres of land.

Commenting on the new Land Acquisition Act, brought by the Centre, KE Krishna Murthy said though most of the States opposed the new land acquisition Act, AP had decided to implement it as it was in favour of safeguarding the interests of the land losers.

According to him, as per the new Act, the land owners would be provided a house site, Rs 5 lakh, Rs 3,000 per month for temporary livelihood, Rs 50,000 for rehabilitation, Rs 50,000 as transport charges and Rs 2,000 for 20 years.

He said according to the new Act, private companies which acquired more than 5,000 acres of land from the land owners for their projects also had to take up rehabilitation work. Land acquisition for a project would be done only when 80 percent of the land owners agreed for it and in the case of PPP projects, 70 per cent of the land owners had to agree.