Interplay with the Railways Act, the Metro Railways Act and the Coal Bearing Areas Act

Three more Fourth Schedule giants acquire on their own tracks: the Railways Act, 1989 for special railway projects, the Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978 for metro corridors, and the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act, 1957 for the coalfields. Each keeps its machinery; all pay, since 2015, on the 2013 Act's measure. This note covers the three tracks and the pattern they share with the highways.

1. The Railways Act's Chapter

The machinery: the 2008 amendment inserted a dedicated land-acquisition chapter for special railway projects on the National Highways model: notification of intention, objections to a competent authority, declaration and vesting in the Central Government, the amount determined by the competent authority, and the arbitrator as the dissatisfied owner's forum, the linear-project design adopted wholesale for dedicated freight corridors and high-speed rail.
The alignment: as a Fourth Schedule enactment, railway acquisitions carry the First Schedule compensation and the Second and Third Schedule R&R from 1 January 2015 under the 2015 Order, computed by the competent authority within the Railways Act's own procedure.
The practice: freight-corridor and bullet-train acquisition has been this chapter's proving ground, with the Tarsem Singh equality logic standing behind any class of awards that trails the aligned standard.

2. The Metro Act's Track

The machinery: for notified metro alignments, the 1978 Act provides its own compact sequence: notification of the proposed works and the land needed, objections, acquisition and vesting, with compensation determined under the Act's provisions and disputes going to the statute's own forums, underground rights of user included, the Act's distinctive contribution, since metros burrow beneath property more than they take it.
The modern overlay: metro projects combine this Act, State metro legislation, negotiated purchase for station footprints, and the 2015 Order's aligned compensation where acquisition applies, with underground user rights compensated on the diminution the tunnel actually works.

3. The Coal Bearing Areas Act

The machinery: the 1957 Act acquires coal-bearing land for the public sector coal economy: preliminary notification of prospecting, declaration of acquisition, and vesting in the Central Government free from encumbrances, with power to vest the land onward in a Government company (Coal India's lineage), and compensation determined under the Act's own provisions with a tribunal for disputes.
The alignment and its friction: the 2015 Order brings the 2013 compensation and R&R measure to CBA acquisitions; the coalfields' long-running grievances, delayed awards for decades-old vestings, employment promises, resettlement of whole townships, are the alignment's hardest test bed, and the Vidya Devi and Section 24-era principles are regularly pressed where possession ran far ahead of payment.
The special feature: CBA vesting can take the coal rights beneath without surface use immediately following, producing the Act's characteristic disputes about surface owners' continuing use, damage from mining beneath, and the compensation for subsidence, questions the general law never meets.

4. The Shared Pattern

Element	Highways	Railways	Metro	Coal
Decider of the amount	Competent authority	Competent authority	The Act's machinery	The Act's machinery and tribunal
The challenge forum	Government-appointed arbitrator	Arbitrator on the same model	The statute's forums	The statute's tribunal
Vesting	On the 3D declaration	On the declaration	Under the Act	On declaration, onward to a Government company
2013-standard money	From 1 January 2015, plus Tarsem Singh for 1997 to 2014	From 1 January 2015	From 1 January 2015 where acquisition applies	From 1 January 2015
What never applies	SIA, consent, the Authority, the lapse clocks	The same	The same	The same

The pattern is the Fourth Schedule's bargain in triplicate: linear and strategic speed, executive deciders, arbitral or tribunal challenge, and, since 2015, universal money. What the oustee loses against the 2013 Act is process, the SIA's hearing, the consent vote, the judicial Authority, the clocks; what equality doctrine has steadily restored is the measure, with Tarsem Singh as the lever. The examination point is the same as the practice point: name the statute, and you have named the procedure; name the date, and you have named the money.

⚠ Key point

Railways (the 2008 special-projects chapter), Metro (1978) and Coal Bearing Areas (1957) acquire on their own tracks: competent authorities or statutory machinery decide, arbitrators or tribunals hear challenges, vesting follows declaration (coal vesting onward to Government companies, with its surface-and-subsidence disputes), and no SIA, consent, Authority or lapse clocks apply. Since 1 January 2015 all three pay the 2013 Act's compensation and R&R under the 2015 Order, with Tarsem Singh's equality logic patrolling the edges: procedure sectoral, measure universal.

5. Related Topics and Provisions

The highways track (Topic 106): the model the pattern copies
The Fourth Schedule (Topic 87): the thirteen in frame
The 2015 Order (Topic 88): the money bridge
Vidya Devi and Section 24 (Topics 121, 85 and 86): the principles pressed in the coalfields