Maharashtra govt decides to apply archaic Land Acquisition Act

The Maharashtra government has decided to apply the archaic, and dodgy, Land Acquisition Act, which will enable it to acquire land from private landowners for the Navi Mumbai airport project, which has been moving at a snail’s pace over the past 20 years.

While it is nobody’s case that the government should let itself be held hostage by private landowners, the state must also realise that the farmers have a genuine case when they ask why they can’t sell their land at the market price when the government can divest public land at those rates. Add to this the fact that the resettlement of at least 5,000 families from seven villages is still to be taken care of, and this has all the makings of a major controversy.

The act, a British Raj legacy, has come in for trenchant criticism from the Supreme Court whenever governments have decided to use it, and rightly so. Far too often have governments of the day used the act to forcibly buy land at cheap rates from farmers in the guise of ‘public use’ and then sell it to private players.

Admittedly, the Navi Mumbai case does not look like one of misuse. The new airport will, after all, not only ease congestion at Mumbai airport, but will also be the engine that will give the city’s economy a boost, and the government may well be justified in using this brahmastra. But in doing so, it must ensure that it makes all the other right moves — providing proper rehabilitation, paying fair compensation, etc. Otherwise, it won’t be long before we have a Nandigram or Singur in our backyard. The government will then have only itself to blame.