Old vs new land bill: Here are the changes

The century-old land laws in India are set for an overhaul as the new bill is tabled at the parliament. The government introduced the new Land Acquisition Bill with one day left for the monsoon session.

The bill provides a fair compensation to the land owners and makes it compulsory to have consent of 80% people of any land acquired area for developmental purposes. Jairam Ramesh elaborated on the conditions included in the bill presented in parliament, which will now go to the standing committee. CNBC-TV18's Mehak Kasbekar reports on the three key changes in the draft that was sent earlier and put into public domain, and the one that has been tabled today. Three major changes in the bill First, they have tightened the definition of public purpose, which was surrounded with a lot of debate that public purpose was loosely defined. Second, they have dropped the clause which says rarest of rare cases for an emergency. The urgency or emergency clause can be used now as far as security threat is concerned or for defence. It cannot be used in the rarest of rare cases because the ministry got a feedback that it can be misinterpreted. Third, this clause applies to some state governments and industries. There was a ban on multi crop irrigated land. Earlier this morning and yesterday, reports said that up to 5% of multi crop irrigated land can be acquired. If the net sown area of a district is less than 50%, it can go till 10%. After a feedback from chief ministers from Kerala, Haryana and Punjab saying that most of the land is irrigative and they need some kind of industrialisation, the 5% of multi crop irrigated land was put in the bill.
In a press conference, Jairam Ramesh said that this bill was politically important. He dedicated the bill and said that this went through because of the urgency that Rahul Gandhi had put. He also mentioned that it was difficult to balance all the three concerns