Land Acquisition for Industry and Mining

Industry and mining are the acquisitions that made the 2013 Act: Singur and Nandigram were industrial takings, and the mineral belt's overlap with the tribal belt wrote the Act's hardest chapters. This note maps how industrial and extractive land is actually assembled now, across the Act, the State industrial statutes, the coal and minerals regimes, and the benefit-sharing machinery growing beside them.

1. Industrial Land

• Inside the 2013 Act: acquisition for private industry is the Act's most conditioned case: an enumerated purpose, 80% consent (70% for PPP), SIA, and the full package, the regime Singur-class takings would now face; government acquisition for industrial estates runs on Section 2(1) with the process but no referendum.
• The State machinery: most industrial land actually moves through the State industrial area Acts (KIADB, MIDC and kin), assent-backed machinery with the 2013 measure pressed in State by State (Topic 108), and through the State amendments' industrial-corridor exemptions where they operate (Topic 96).
• The market route: post-2013, large private assembly shifted to purchase, with Section 46's filing, R&R and land-use lock above the State thresholds and the 40% sharing rule catching the speculation window (Topic 57), industry's land strategy now being substantially a Section 46 compliance strategy.

2. Mining Land

• Coal: the Coal Bearing Areas Act track (Topic 107): vesting in the Centre and onward to Government companies, tribunal compensation, aligned money since 2015, and the coalfields' legacy grievances as the alignment's test bed.
• Non-coal minerals: the MMDR Act grants mineral rights but no surface: the lessee must separately secure the land, by 2013-Act acquisition where a public purpose fits, by State industrial machinery, or by purchase with Section 46 consequences, the two-key structure (mineral right plus surface right) that examiners and practitioners alike must keep separate.
• The tribal constraint: in Fifth Schedule areas the whole stack of Topic 109 applies, Samatha barring transfer to private miners, PESA and Section 41 requiring Gram Sabha consent, the FRA and Niyamgiri gating forest diversion, so extractive projects in the mineral belt clear every door or none.
• Benefit sharing: the District Mineral Foundations under the MMDR amendments, funded by royalty-linked contributions for mining-affected persons and areas, run beside the Act as the extractive sector's own R&R-flavoured machinery, compensation for the mine's ongoing shadow, not only its footprint.

3. The Sector's Case Studies

Three episodes carry the theme's lessons. Singur (Topic 119): industrial acquisition without consent ends in political reversal and judicial return, the case that produced the consent requirement. Nandigram: the SEZ-era taking abandoned before acquisition completed, proving the political limits the 2013 Act then codified. Niyamgiri (Topic 53): the Gram Sabhas' refusal ending a mining project, the consent principle operating at full constitutional strength. Together they explain the sector's present shape: industry buys where it can (Section 46 notwithstanding), uses State machinery where exemptions run, and faces the Act's full regime only for compulsory private-purpose takings, while mining, locked to geology, cannot relocate and therefore meets the tribal stack head-on, which is why the sector produces the subject's hardest and most political cases.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• The consent requirement (Topic 12): industry's gate
• Section 46 (Topic 57): the purchase discipline
• The tribal stack (Topic 109): the mineral belt's law
• The coal track (Topic 107): extraction's own statute