Comparisons and Statutory Relationships: Complete Notes (Part L)

Part L places the Act among its neighbours: against its 1894 predecessor, against the State's other land-getting instruments, and against the sectoral and protective statutes it must work with, highways and railways, coal and metros, SEZs and industrial boards, the cities, and the tribal land stack. This consolidated note covers Topics 104 to 109 of this series.

1. Against the Predecessor

The 1894-to-2013 movement runs in five strokes: purpose enumerated where it was elastic (private hospitals, schools and hotels excluded outright); consent and social scrutiny created (80% and 70%, the SIA with hearing and expert appraisal, Gram Sabha consent in Scheduled Areas); compensation rebuilt, from market-plus-30% to the highest-of-three value, the rural multiplier, assets, 100% solatium and the premiums, roughly twice urban and four times rural; rehabilitation created as the six-limb affected family's statutory right, gating possession itself; and the afterlife disciplined, purpose, ownership, five-year utilisation and the 40% appreciation share, with the judicial LARR Authority replacing the civil court. The continuities matter equally: eminent domain, the notification-declaration-award skeleton, the valuation date and doctrine, the award's offer-character and the colourability review all survive, which is why the old case law still works inside the new Act, and the State amendments trim the process rows while the money rows stand everywhere.

2. The Instrument Matrix

The State's four ways to get land divide by what passes. Acquisition takes title absolutely, compelled, at the First Schedule package, with the Act's full protections. Requisition takes possession and use for a time under the 1952 Act and its State counterparts, at rent-like compensation, and must stay genuinely temporary or ripen into acquisition, the principle the Act's own Sections 81 to 83 encode with the three-year cap and the owner's ruin-election. Pooling trades plots for developed plots under town-planning law, voluntary, upside-bearing and risk-bearing. Purchase buys at policy-benchmarked prices, with Section 46 catching large private buyers. Substance beats label across all four, the least-sufficient-instrument principle orders the menu, and the Act's protections follow compulsion, the quartet's efficiency and its equity gap.

3. The Sectoral Tracks

Highways: the NH Act's 3A-to-3H machine, competent authority and Government-appointed arbitrator (Sayedabad Tea), no SIA, consent or clocks; 2013-standard money from 1 January 2015, and for the 1997 to 2014 awards, Tarsem Singh (2019) read down Section 3J on Article 14 grounds: solatium and interest payable.
Railways, Metro, Coal: the same bargain in triplicate, the Railways Act's special-projects chapter on the NH model, the Metro Act's compact sequence with underground user rights, and the Coal Bearing Areas Act's vesting onward to Government companies with its surface-and-subsidence disputes, all aligned on the Act's measure since 2015: procedure sectoral, money universal.
SEZ, industry, cities: the SEZ Act has no acquisition power, so zone land runs on the 2013 Act with consent or on purchase and pooling; the State industrial area Acts keep assent-backed machinery while the 2013 measure is pressed in State by State; the urban development authorities always used the general law, which made them the Section 24 epicentre and now points new assembly toward pooling.
The tribal stack: transfer prohibitions (Samatha-enforced), PESA and the Sixth Schedule Councils, the FRA with its Niyamgiri gate, and the Act's Sections 41 and 42 on top, cumulative under Section 103: the transfer law decides who is paid, the Gram Sabha and Councils who consents, the FRA when displacement may begin, every door at once.

4. The Part at a Glance

Relationship	The governing idea	The lever case or rule
1894 to 2013	Class, price and promise changed; skeleton and valuation doctrine survive	The fifteen-row comparison, qualified by the State amendments
The four instruments	What passes decides everything; protection follows compulsion	Temporariness or ripening; substance over label
The Fourth Schedule tracks	Procedure sectoral, measure universal since 1 January 2015	The 2015 Order; Tarsem Singh for the gap years
SEZ, industry and the city	Machinery varies; the 2013 arithmetic is the gravitational floor	Consent for zone acquisition; Section 24 for the urban legacy
The tribal stack	Cumulative protection: every layer must clear	Samatha, Niyamgiri, Sections 41 and 103

⚠ Key point

Part L in one line: against 1894, the 2013 Act changed the class, the price and the promise while keeping the skeleton; among the instruments, protection follows compulsion and substance beats label; across the sectoral tracks, procedure is theirs and the money is the Act's (the 2015 Order plus Tarsem Singh); and on tribal land, every protective layer, transfer codes, PESA, the FRA and the Act's own chapter, applies at once under Section 103's cumulation rule.

5. The Topics of This Part

Topic 104: The 1894 and 2013 Acts: the complete comparison
Topic 105: Acquisition, requisition, pooling and purchase
Topic 106: The National Highways Act and Tarsem Singh
Topic 107: The Railways, Metro and Coal Acts
Topic 108: SEZ, industrial area and urban development laws
Topic 109: The Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the tribal land laws