Land losers to receive handsome compensation henceforth
GUILHERME ALMEIDA
MARGAO: Land acquisition for the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Cuncolim project will cost the government a bomb. Reason: The new Land Acquisition Act – the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act – has come into force which envisages payment to the farmers and landowners up to four times the market value for land acquired in rural areas and two times the value of land in an urban area.
That the area proposed to be acquired falls in an urban area given that Cuncolim enjoys a Municipal status, the land owners will receive two times the market value of the land sought to be acquired by the government for the acquiring department – Director of Technical Education.
Sources in the South Goa district Collectorate said the Land Acquisition office had initially calculated a whopping Rs 31 crore as the preliminary cost of acquiring land admeasuring 4.56 lakh sq mts. But, with the new Act already in force, the cost of land acquisition itself is now expected to cost the government Rs 60-plus crore.
Officials informed that though the Goa government had initiated the land acquisition proceedings to acquire the land in question for the NIT project in Cuncolim under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, the proceedings remained incomplete and now attracts the retrospective clause in the new Act.
Officials in the know said the retrospective clause would be applicable in cases where the land acquisition has begun and compensation amount has not been announced and in cases where the land acquisition proceedings had started under the old law, but compensation amount or award has not been announced even after five years since the commencement of the land acquisition proceedings.
In the case of NIT Cuncolim, the land acquisition proceedings is still at the stage of Section 4 of the old Act and the government would notify Section 6 only after receiving the report from the Land Acquisition Officer under Section 5-A of the Act. Sources in the know said the district Collector Venancio Furtado and the Land Acquisition Officer, Umakhant Korkankar are busy giving final touches to the report under Section 5-A before the same if forwarded to the government given the controversial nature of the land acquisition proceedings in view of objections received for the project from many quarters, including the local Cuncolim Municipal body.
Furtado confirmed that compensation payable to the land owners in respect of the NIT, Cuncolim project will come under the new Act. ‘The proceedings must have started under the old Act, but the compensation as prescribed under the new Act will be payable to the land owners”, he added.
The Goa government had initially proposed acquisition of six lakh sq.mts of land for the proposed NIT, but has now restricted the land to around 4.56 lakh sq.mts. The government will take a final call on the land acquisition after receiving a report from the Land Acquisition Officer under section 5-A of the Act.
