Legislative History of the 2013 Act: From the NAC Draft to Act 30 of 2013

The 2013 Act took the long road through Parliament: a policy that could not be enforced, twin Bills that lapsed, a National Advisory Council draft, a Standing Committee that wanted it tougher, and a final text passed in the last full year of a Parliament under land-acquisition siege. The passage matters doctrinally, because the Statement of Objects and Reasons and the committee record are standard interpretive material for the Act's contested provisions. This note tracks the Bill from conception to commencement.

1. The False Starts

• Policy first: the National Policy on Resettlement and Rehabilitation, 2003 and the National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, 2007 stated entitlements for displaced families but created no rights; implementation depended on project authorities applying their own policy to themselves.
• The twin Bills of 2007: the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007 and the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007 sought to reform the 1894 Act and codify the 2007 policy in separate statutes. Both passed the Lok Sabha in February 2009 but could not clear the Rajya Sabha before dissolution and lapsed, and the two-statute design was itself faulted: keeping acquisition and rehabilitation in separate laws kept them separable in practice.
• The lesson drawn: the next attempt would be a single integrated statute in which no acquisition could proceed without its rehabilitation component, the architecture the 2013 Act adopted.

2. The 2011 Bill and Committee Scrutiny

• The NAC draft: after Singur, Nandigram and the 2011 Bhatta Parsaul agitation, the National Advisory Council produced the integrated draft that the Ministry of Rural Development, under Jairam Ramesh, turned into the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, introduced in the Lok Sabha on 7 September 2011.
• The Standing Committee: the Bill went to the Standing Committee on Rural Development, which reported on 17 May 2012. The Committee pressed for stronger protections, recommending among other things that government acquisition for private companies and PPPs be barred, that food-security protection cover all agricultural land, and that consent and SIA requirements be tightened; the government accepted the direction but not the full distance, retaining private and PPP acquisition subject to 80% and 70% consent.
• The renaming: official amendments in 2012 and 2013 reframed the Bill as the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, the title advertising the two promises, fair compensation and transparency, on which the old law had most conspicuously failed.

3. Passage and Commencement

The Act passed with broad cross-party support, the principal opposition party voting for it, a point that mattered when the same party's government moved in the opposite direction a year later. The 2014 Ordinance and the lapsed 2015 Amendment Bill, which would have exempted five categories of projects from consent and SIA, are Topic 94 and Topic 95; their failure left the 2013 text standing at the Centre, and pushed dilution efforts to the States under Article 254(2) (Topic 96).

4. Using the History

The legislative record earns its place in practice. The Statement of Objects and Reasons states the twin purpose, a humane, participative, informed and transparent process, and just and fair compensation with adequate rehabilitation, and courts have read the Act's beneficial provisions, Section 24 above all, in that light; the Constitution Bench in Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal (2020) worked through the Bill history in construing the lapse provision. The Standing Committee report supplies the mischief each clause addressed, and the renaming itself has interpretive weight: a statute titled a "Right to" fair compensation invites the construction most protective of that right.

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• Preamble and salient features (Topic 5): the objects the history produced
• The 2014 Ordinance (Topic 94): the counter-move
• The 2015 Amendment Bill (Topic 95): why dilution lapsed
• State amendments (Topic 96): where the contest moved