Unutilised SEZ Land: Forcible Land Acquisition for What!

 Nesar Ahmad

As the opposition to the bill proposing amendments in the Land Acquisition
and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 intensifies within and outside of the
Parliament, the government has provided data on unutilised land acquired for
SEZ in 20 states of the country.

A major argument made by the government and supporters of
the corporate led growth in favour of the bill amending the Land Acquisition and
Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 is unavailability of land for the industrialization.
The data provided by the government in an answer to a Rajya Sbaha question
about the land acquired and used for the Special Economic Zones, however, is telling
another story. Sometime ago in its report on SEZ lands, CAG also found not only
cases of land acquired for SEZ being vacant, but also being diverted to other uses
like real estate and not adhering to the conditions like generating employment.

Now the Modi government has also admitted to the fact in the
Rajya Sabha that as high as 40% of the total land acquired for SEZ
across 20 states of the country remains unutlised up to March 13, 2015. In a
written reply to a Rajya Sbaha question, Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, State Minister
of Commerce and Industry (Independent Charge) provided following figures on the
unutilized land in various state of the country.

Source: Answer to a written question by Ms. Nirmala
Sitharaman in Rajya Sabha on March 18, 2015.

As the above table shows, in four states 100% of the SEZ land
acquired remains unutilized, while in seven out of 20 states 50% of the total
land acquired under SEZ remains unutilized. In six other states from close to 40
% to 50% of the total land acquired for SEZ remains unutilized.

The states with 100% unutilized are Nagaland, Manipur, Goa and
Jharkhand. Some of the states with high rate of unutilized SEZ lands include
Chhattisgarh (78.24%), Haryana (70.69%), Rajasthan (82.31%), Uttar Pradesh
(63.24%),, Tamil Nadu (53.08%), Punjab (67.04%), Chandigarh (59.60%).

Another interesting fact is more than 77% of notified SEZ
land is concentrated in four states – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and
Tamil Nadu. These states have acquired 35,415 hectares of land out of 45,782 hectares
of total land acquired by the 20 states for which data is provided by the
Minister. What is important here is these four states are also among the states
with high ratio of unutilized SEZ land. About 20% of the total SEZ land remains
unutilized in Andhra Pradesh; about 39% in Gujarat; 47% in Maharashtra and 53%
of the SEZ land in Tamil Nadu remain unutilized.

The land acquired for SEZs is but a small share of the total
land acquired for numerous projects by the government in the name of
development. In fact there is no record of the total land acquired under now
redundant Land Acquisition Act 1894 and various other union and state
government acts, still in effect, designed to acquire private land for public
purposes. How much of that land remains unutilized is also not known. According
to a government committee on land reforms, more than 2.1 million ha of
agricultural land has been transferred for non-agricultural purposes during
1990-2003. However, there are no details on how much of these lands are acquired
by the government. What is known, however,
is most of the acquired land belonged to poor and marginalized farmers, majority
of them being tribals and dalits communities.  

The government, therefore, must go for a country wide survey
of status of all the acquired land, before making law for unbridled and easy
and cheaper land acquisition for corporate in the name of public purpose.Photo curtsey: http://www.stockpicturesforeveryone.com/