More Beneficial State Laws and the Family's Option: Sections 107 and 108

Federalism under this Act cuts both ways: Article 254(2) lets States dilute, and Sections 107 and 108 invite them to improve, expressly preserving every State's freedom to legislate higher compensation and better R&R, and giving the affected family the option to choose the better package where one exists. This note covers the two provisions, their relationship to the amendment controversies, and how the option works.

1. The State's Freedom: Section 107

• The text's effect: nothing in the Act prevents a State legislature from enacting any law for the State providing higher compensation than payable under the Act, or making provisions for rehabilitation and resettlement which are more beneficial than those under the Act, enhancement declared compatible in advance.
• Why it matters doctrinally: in the concurrent field, a State law better than the Central standard might still have faced a repugnancy argument, different is different, the argument runs; Section 107 forecloses it: a more generous State law is not repugnant by reason of its generosity, and needs no Article 254(2) Presidential assent on that account.
• What it covers: compensation above the First Schedule's product, R&R richer than the Second and Third Schedules, by State law, and, read with Section 108, by State policy too, the enhanced packages several States pay for specific sectors ride on exactly this freedom.

2. The Family's Option: Section 108

• The right: where a State law or policy offers a higher compensation than calculated under this Act, or more beneficial rehabilitation and resettlement provisions, the affected persons or their families may opt for that higher or more beneficial package, the choice is the family's, exercised as the provision and rules arrange.
• The option's logic: two packages, one chooser, and the chooser is the person the statute protects: the State cannot impose the cheaper of two available regimes, and the comparison is made by the beneficiary, package against package.
• Working the choice: the comparison is practical, not line-by-line cherry-picking: the family opts for the more beneficial framework as a whole where the provision so operates, with the Collector's and Administrator's records capturing the election; advising a family therefore means costing both packages, the Act's full arithmetic against the State scheme's, before the option is exercised.
• The ratchet pattern completed: Section 106 stops the Centre's notifications from cutting; Section 107 clears the States to raise; Section 108 hands the comparison to the family: three provisions, one direction.

3. The Provisions in the Federal Contest

Sections 107 and 108 are the mirror image of the story Topic 96 tells. The post-2015 State amendments used Article 254(2) to subtract, exemptions from SIA and consent for favoured project categories, and needed Presidential assent precisely because subtraction is repugnant to the Central scheme. Addition needs no such machinery: a State that wants to pay a higher multiplier, richer allowances or better resettlement simply legislates or adopts the policy, and Sections 107 and 108 carry it. The asymmetry is deliberate and is the Act's federal philosophy in miniature: the 2013 standards are a national floor, degradable only through the Constitution's own exceptional route, improvable by any State at will, with the affected family holding the option whenever two regimes coexist. For practice, every acquisition file in every State therefore carries two standing questions: has this State enhanced anything (Section 107), and has the family been told of its option (Section 108), the second being an advising lawyer's checklist item that implementation routinely forgets.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Section 106's ratchet (Topic 90): the Central half of the pattern
• State amendments (Topic 96): subtraction's harder, assent-bound road
• Section 103 (Topic 89): the coexistence clause behind both
• The Second Schedule's minima (Topic 48): the floor the options build on