Amnesty has stressed on India's obligations to international human rights treaties to flag their concerns on the latest version of the Land Bill, 2015.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International India has sent a submission to the joint parliamentary committee on land bill, flagging its concerns about lack of consent, social impact assessment and consultation under the amended legislation. In its seven-page submission, the organisation said that, "if passed into law in its current form, the Bill will undermine the rights of communities to participation and genuine consultation about issues that affected them and thereby facilitate and encourage forced evictions, prohibited by international law."
The parliamentary committee will be taking written submissions on the Bill up till June 14. The committee has received around 500 representations by now and in the last meeting on Tuesday began taking oral submissions from farmer bodies.
Amnesty has stressed on India's obligations to international human rights treaties to flag their concerns on the latest version of the Land Bill, 2015. Their submissions points out that the UN Basic Principles and Gudelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement require states to carry out comprehensive and holistic impact assessments before projects are initiated. The Principles point out that impact of displacement on women, children, the elderly and marginalised have to be taken into account.
Development and infrastructure projects in India are estimated to have caused the physical displacement of about 60 million people from 1947 to 2000, of which an estimated 5 million were displaced by mining alone1. According to planning commission data only 29 per cent of those affected by displacement have been rehabilitated.
In its submission to the parliamentary committee, Amnesty has recommended that all projects involving land acquisition have to go through a comprehensive and holistic social impact assessment and right to consultation and consent of project affected has to be restored. Also, it added, the exemption provided to 13 categories of projects from taking consent in tribal or scheduled areas should be reversed.
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