Curation Team
GHAZIABAD: For hundreds of families across five villages of Ghaziabad, the wait for progress has been long and uncertain. The promise of Harnandipuram township, pitched as a modern urban hub, has been shadowed by delays in acquiring the land needed for it.
Now, Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) has decided to invoke the Land Acquisition Act, hoping to ease hurdles and fast-track the project.
It was at a board meeting on Tuesday that GDA approved the proposal to acquire land for Harnandipuram under the Land Acquisition Act, stepping away from the slower process of mutual consent. Since March, GDA had managed to acquire just 14 hectares through negotiated agreements, with another 6 hectares still in process. This left a daunting 470 hectares yet to be secured.
“The pace at which land acquisition was taking place is very slow. We still have to acquire 470 hectares. So, we felt we may not be able to acquire land for the township on time through the ‘mutually agreed rate’ route. Therefore, a proposal was placed before the board that the acquisition should take place in keeping with provisions of the Land Acquisition Act. The board has passed the proposal,” a GDA official said.
Switching to Land Acquisition Act is expected to streamline the process. Under this law, GDA can notify the land, making it legally binding for farmers to part with their holdings at a compensation rate set at four times the circle rate in rural areas, and twice the rate in urban clusters.”It will help bypass the time-taking mutual consent route,” the official added.
Previously, a committee led by the district magistrate had also set acquisition rates at four times the circle rate, but reaching agreements with individual landowners proved slow and challenging.
The Land Acquisition (Rehabilitation & Resettlement) Act, 2013, sets out a clear framework for compensating landowners, depending on whether their land falls in rural or urban areas. To optimise costs, GDA is even considering reclassifying some panchayat areas as municipal, which would reduce the compensation multiplier from four to two.
