Application of the Act: Section 2

Section 2 is the Act's gateway: it says when the machinery of acquisition, compensation and rehabilitation switches on, and it draws the Act's most consequential lines, between government acquisition, acquisition for private companies and PPPs with their consent thresholds, and pure private purchase that nevertheless attracts rehabilitation duties. This note works through the three limbs of Section 2 and the edges of the Act's application.

1. Government Acquisition: Section 2(1)

The Act's provisions on acquisition, compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement apply when the appropriate Government acquires land for its own use, hold and control, including for public sector undertakings and for public purpose. "Public purpose" is here given its enumerated content (examined fully in Topic 11): defence and national security; infrastructure projects as listed, excluding private hospitals, private educational institutions and private hotels; projects for project-affected families; housing for such income groups as the appropriate Government specifies; planned development and improvement of village sites, and land for residential purposes for the poor, the landless and those displaced by natural calamities. For this limb no consent is required, the classical eminent-domain core, but SIA, the food-security bar, the compensation formula and R&R all apply.

2. Acquisition for Private Companies and PPPs: Section 2(2)

• The two thresholds: where the appropriate Government acquires land for public private partnership projects, in which ownership of the land continues to vest in the Government, the prior consent of 70% of the affected families is required; where it acquires for private companies for public purpose, the threshold is 80%.
• Consent with the SIA: the consent process is carried out along with the Social Impact Assessment, in the manner the appropriate Government prescribes, so the family decides with the project's costs and benefits on the table, not after the notification has fixed the facts.
• Public purpose still required: consent supplements, never replaces, public purpose; an acquisition for a private company must independently serve a Section 2(1) purpose, and the declaration under Section 19 must so state.
• Who counts and how: consent is of affected families, not merely landowners, which is of a piece with the Act's widened protective class; the counting mechanics come from the 2014 SIA and Consent Rules (Topic 100).

3. Private Purchase Above the Limits: Section 2(3)

Where a private company purchases land through private negotiations equal to or more than the limits the appropriate Government prescribes, the company must fulfil rehabilitation and resettlement obligations under Section 46, the Act following the transaction even where the State never acquires. And where a private company, having purchased part, requests the Government to acquire the balance, the Act's full package, compensation and R&R, applies to the whole as Section 46 and the proviso structure provide. The design closes the obvious evasion: a project that would displace a village cannot escape rehabilitation duties by buying the village piecemeal (Topics 57 and 58 take the mechanics).

4. The Edges of Application

• Territorial: the Act extends to the whole of India (after the 2019 reorganisation, Jammu and Kashmir included).
• The Fourth Schedule: by Section 105, the Act does not apply to the thirteen enactments in the Fourth Schedule, the National Highways Act, the Railways Act, the Coal Bearing Areas Act and their fellows, except that their compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement standards were aligned to the Act's by notification from 1 January 2015 (Topics 87 and 88).
• The transition: Section 24 governs proceedings begun under the 1894 Act, applying the new compensation where no award had been made and lapsing stale acquisitions on its own terms (Topics 85 and 86).
• State variations: in States with Article 254(2) amendments, Section 2's thresholds operate subject to the State's exemptions (Topic 96).

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• Public purpose (Topic 11): Section 2(1) unpacked
• The consent requirement (Topic 12): 80% and 70% in practice
• Section 46 and private purchase (Topics 57 and 58): the third limb's mechanics
• Section 105 and the Fourth Schedule (Topic 87): what stays outside