2.1. Process of Land Acquisition

The land acquisition process includes an assessment of the land required for a project, notification and eventual acquisition, and the ability of the Government or the line Department to fulfil its obligation to provide land without any encumbrance or encroachments. Shifting of utilities from the project site and the acquisition of right of way for project development are also part of the process.

Ideally, land acquisition for projects such as development of roads, water supply network, power distribution network, etc. must be completed ahead of bidding so as not to impede the project development process. Currently, the Central Legislation Land Acquisition Act 1894 is used by the union Government as well as State Governments primarily to acquire land for a public purpose..

Following protests and controversies over land acquisition, the Government of India introduced an enactment for land acquisition, the "Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act", 2013 (RFCTLARR Act) in September 2013.

Objective of the enactment is to acquire land for public purpose under a humane, participative, informed and transparent process and to provide just and fair compensation to the affected families. Public Purpose is defined under the enactment and includes strategic purposes relating to naval, military, air force and armed forces of the Union, including central paramilitary forces or any work vital to national security or defence of India or State police, safety of the people, for infrastructure projects, project for project affected people, project for housing for such income groups, as may be specified from time to time by the appropriate Government.

The enactment clearly sets out the procedure to be adopted for acquisition of land with respect to development of projects under PPP framework. The flowchart given below sets out the key steps involved in acquisition of land for development of projects under PPP framework.

As set out in the flowchart given above, the entire process of land acquisition could be dealt in two stages; viz. (i) Preliminary Notification Stage which pertains to land acquisition and (ii) Notification Stage which involves Land Acquisition and the Rehabilitation & Resettlement (R&R) Scheme.