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Shorter route to Airport: Chandigarh heeds landowners, invokes Land Acquisition Act 2013
With 80 of the 110 landowners refusing to give their land through the Negotiation Policy of 2018, the UT has decided to switch to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act, 2013, for acquisition
The wait for a shorter route to the Airport is set to get longer as the Chandigarh administration has been forced to make a last-minute policy change for land acquisition.
With 80 of the 110 landowners refusing to give their land through the Negotiation Policy of 2018, the UT has decided to switch to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act, 2013, for acquisition.
A total of 51 acres -- 39.6 acres in Chandigarh and 12 acres in Punjab’s Jagatpura and Khandala villages, needs to be acquired for the project.
The landowners had insisted that their land be acquired either through the Land Acquisition Act 2013, or the land pooling policy of Punjab or Haryana.
Confirming that the administration has decided to go with the Land Acquisition Act 2013 following objections against the Negotiation Policy 2018, UT finance secretary Vijay Namdeorao Zade said that as far as land pooling is concerned, there is no such policy in Chandigarh.
He further said that the UT had initially opted for the Negotiation Policy 2018 to save time but now since they have decided to switch to the Land Acquisition Act 2013, it will take some time to acquire land.
Why farmers are pressing for the 2013 Act
Compared to the one-time monetary compensation of UT’s Negotiation Policy, the Land Acquisition Act 2013 offers acquisition at market rate, a government job to all shareholders and provision to move court if the market rate is not paid. The farmers’ main contention against the Negotiation Policy is that it has no provision for the landowners to move court if they are unsatisfied with the compensation.
UT offering up to ₹3.34 cr per acre
In November last year, UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit had given the green light to complete the land acquisition process through the 2018 Negotiation Policy.
Following this, the UT administration had issued a notification offering compensation ranging from ₹2.54 crore to ₹3.34 crore per acre to landowners for the acquisition.
The project is also facing delays owing to the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The UT administration, in the last week of January, had sent the project file to the Union ministry of home affairs for approval, as all projects estimated to be over ₹100 crore need Centre’s clearance. However, the ministry is not likely to take up the matter before Lok Sabha polls, expected to be held in April or May this year.
New road to cut travel time to five minutes
The new road will start from the T-point intersection of Vikas Marg (coming from Sector-43 ISBT) and Purv Marg (coming from Tribune Chowk).
The current distance from this intersection to the airport is 11.5 km after traversing through Mohali. The shorter route will reduce this to around 3.5 km, thereby bringing the travel time down from 25 minutes to 5 minutes.
The planned shorter route will be 60-metre-wide, with three main carriageways, two service lanes and 2-metre-wide cycle tracks on both sides.
