Preparation of the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Scheme: Sections 16 to 18

While the objections of Section 15 are being heard, the Act opens its second front: the Administrator for Rehabilitation and Resettlement surveys the affected families and drafts the scheme that will rebuild their lives, a scheme reviewed by the Collector, approved by the Commissioner, and published like every other document in this statute. Sections 16 to 18 are the R&R planning chapter in miniature. This note follows the scheme from census to approval.

1. The Survey and Census: Section 16

Upon publication of the preliminary notification, the Administrator conducts a survey and census of the affected families, in the prescribed manner and within the prescribed time, and the census's statutory contents map the losses the scheme must answer:

• particulars of lands and immovable properties being acquired of each affected family;
• livelihoods lost in respect of landless families and livelihood losers, the limbs of the affected-family definition counted, not assumed;
• a list of public utilities and Government buildings affected or likely to be affected;
• details of amenities and infrastructural facilities affected or likely to be affected; and
• details of common property resources being acquired, the grazing grounds, ponds and pathways whose loss falls on everyone and appears in no title deed.

2. The Draft Scheme and Its Hearing

• The draft: based on the census, the Administrator prepares the draft Rehabilitation and Resettlement Scheme: the particulars of the R&R entitlements of each landowner and landless affected family, the details of any resettlement area, and, critically, a time limit for implementing the scheme, rehabilitation with a deadline, not an aspiration.
• The scheme's public hearing: the draft is given wide publicity in the affected area and discussed at a public hearing there, in the prescribed manner; in Scheduled Areas, the consultation takes the form PESA requires, through the Gram Sabha, the second of the Act's village-level hearings and the one devoted entirely to rehabilitation.
• Submission: the Administrator submits the draft, revised in the light of the hearing, to the Collector.

3. Review and Approval: Sections 17 and 18

The Collector reviews the draft scheme and submits it with his suggestions to the Commissioner for Rehabilitation and Resettlement, and the scheme takes legal effect on the Commissioner's approval (Section 17 and Section 18's first movement). The approved scheme is then made public: available in the local language at the offices of the Panchayat, Municipality or Municipal Corporation, the District Collector, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate and the Tehsil, published in the affected areas, and uploaded on the website of the appropriate Government, the Section 6 publication method, applied now to the document the affected families will live by. The hierarchy is deliberate: the officer who drafts (Administrator) is reviewed by the officer who acquires (Collector) and approved by the officer whose whole mandate is rehabilitation (Commissioner), so the scheme answers to a supervisor whose success is not measured in acres acquired.

4. The Scheme's Place in the Acquisition

The draft scheme matures into the declaration stage: under Section 19, the declaration of intended acquisition is published along with a summary of the R&R scheme, and the Act permits no declaration unless the scheme's summary can accompany it (Topic 29). From there the scheme's particulars become the R&R award the Collector passes for each affected family under Section 31, and possession under Section 38 waits, as the Act arranges it, on the R&R entitlements being honoured. The sequence is the 2013 Act's central mechanical reform: rehabilitation planning begins at notification, is heard in the village, binds through the declaration and award, and gates possession itself, dismantling the 1894 practice in which the land went first and the promises followed, or did not.

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• The declaration (Topic 29): where the scheme's summary becomes mandatory
• The R&R award (Topic 47): the scheme individuated
• Administrator and Commissioner (Topic 55): the officers in depth
• The Second and Third Schedules (Topics 48 and 49): the entitlements the scheme carries