Additional Compensation for Multiple Displacement: Section 39

Some families are displaced by development more than once: the dam takes the village, the resettlement colony sits in the path of the highway, the highway's widening takes the shop. Section 39 is the Act's answer to serial displacement: the Collector is to avoid displacing the already-displaced, and where it cannot be avoided, the second displacement is paid double. This short note covers the rule, its rationale and its working.

1. The Rule

• The avoidance duty: the Collector shall, as far as possible, not displace any family which has already been displaced by the appropriate Government for an earlier acquisition, re-displacement is a last resort inside a statute that already treats displacement itself as a last resort.
• The premium: where displacement of such a family is nonetheless resorted to, the family is paid additional compensation equivalent to the compensation determined under the Act for the second or successive displacements, the award computed and then matched, so the twice-displaced family receives, in substance, double the Act's already-doubled package.
• Who qualifies: the trigger is prior displacement by an acquisition, not mere prior acquisition of some land; the family that lost a field but kept its home earlier, and now loses the home, is displaced for the first time and takes the ordinary package, while the family uprooted before and uprooted again takes the premium.

2. The Rationale

Displacement's costs compound rather than repeat. The first displacement spends the family's adjustment capital, the community ties, the local knowledge, the incremental investments a household makes in a place over decades, and the second displacement takes what was rebuilt with weakened materials. The Indian development record supplied the evidence: dam-displaced families resettled onto land later taken for industry or infrastructure appear throughout the displacement literature and the Narmada-era litigation, and the 2007 policy had already recognised multiple displacement as a special injury. Section 39 prices the compounding: deterrence on the planning side, the avoidance duty forces alignment and siting choices to route around resettlement colonies, and restitution on the payment side where routing fails. It also completes a design triad: Section 10 protects the land that feeds, Section 41 the communities most often displaced, and Section 39 the families development has already moved once.

3. Working the Section

• Proof: the earlier displacement is proved from the earlier acquisition's own record, the prior R&R award, the resettlement allotment, the census entries, and the SIA and Administrator's survey in the new acquisition should flag previously displaced families as a class, which is where the avoidance duty operationally bites.
• Computation: the premium equals the family's compensation under the new acquisition, determined on the ordinary First and Second Schedule arithmetic and then paid again as the additional amount for the successive displacement.
• In the awards: the entitlement belongs in the family's Section 31 R&R award (and the Section 23 award as applicable), particularised like every other item; omission is referable to the Authority.
• In planning review: an alignment that ploughs through a resettlement colony without recorded consideration of alternatives sits badly with the section's "as far as possible" duty, and the Section 8 examination and SIA record are where that consideration must appear.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Displaced family (Topic 13): the status the section compounds
• The R&R award (Topic 47): where the premium is decreed
• Development-induced displacement (Topic 110): the record behind the rule
• The Section 8 examination (Topic 21): where avoidance is demonstrated