Haryana govt's move to return over 1k acres suffers setback

With the Punjab and Haryana high court striking down a provision to de-notify tracts of land acquired for public purpose, Haryana government's six-year-old move to return 1,019 acres, acquired for the Dadupur-Nalvi irrigation scheme, to the landowners has come a cropper.

- Hitender Rao

CHANDIGARH:

De-notification of land acquired by the state government for public purposes means that the land will be returned to the original landowners after recovering the compensation amount paid to them for acquisition.

The "ill advised" move, as was termed by the opposition, piloted under the BJP rule with Manohar Lal Khattar at the helm, saw its end after the high court in December 2024 struck down section 101-A of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, a clause inserted by way of state amendment in 2018 with retrospective effect from January 1, 2014, the date the 2013 central Act came into force. Section 101-A empowered the state government to de-notify the land on account of the fact that the public purpose for which it was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 became unviable or non-essential.