The Rehabilitation and Resettlement Award: Section 31

Section 31 is where rehabilitation stops being a scheme and becomes a decree: the Collector passes a Rehabilitation and Resettlement award for each affected family, in terms of the approved scheme, itemising everything the family is to receive. The 1894 Act had one award; this Act has two, and the second is the one the landless family lives on. This note covers the award's making, its statutory contents, and its legal force.

1. The Making

• By whom and for whom: the Collector passes the R&R award for each affected family, owner and landless alike, in terms of the entitlements provided in the approved R&R scheme, one family, one award, the Act's insistence that rehabilitation be individuated, not announced in bulk.
• When: with the land acquisition award's season: the Section 23 award prices the land, the Section 31 award settles the family's package, and both precede the Section 38 possession gate.
• On what record: the Administrator's census and survey (Section 16), corrected through the scheme's public hearing and the claims made under the Section 21 notice, a family missed by the census asserts itself at those stages, and the award is where the assertion pays.

2. The Statutory Contents

The award includes, family by family, the particulars the section enumerates:

• the rehabilitation and resettlement amount payable to the family;
• the bank account number to which the amounts are to be transferred, the Act legislating direct benefit transfer into acquisition law;
• the particulars of the house site and house to be allotted, in the case of displaced families;
• the particulars of land allotted to displaced families, where land-for-land applies;
• the particulars of the one-time subsistence allowance and transportation allowance, for displaced families;
• the particulars of payment for cattle sheds and petty shops, where applicable;
• the particulars of the one-time amount to artisans and small traders;
• the details of mandatory employment to be provided to a member of the family, where that option operates;
• the particulars of any fishing rights that may be involved;
• the particulars of annuity and other entitlements; and
• the particulars of any special provisions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The list is the Second Schedule turned into an operative order: each entitlement the Schedule provides must appear, quantified and particularised, against the family it belongs to, and an award that skips an applicable item is incomplete on its face.

3. The Award's Legal Force

• It binds like an award: the R&R award is the Collector's statutory determination; the dissatisfied family's road is the Section 64 reference to the LARR Authority, whose jurisdiction expressly includes R&R grievances, and thence the Section 74 appeal.
• It gates possession: under Section 38 the monetary entitlements it awards must be paid or tendered before possession, and the infrastructural entitlements completed within the Act's window, an unexecuted R&R award is a standing bar the family can enforce.
• It survives the project's convenience: the award's obligations fall on the Requiring Body as part of the cost of acquisition, monitored by the Commissioner's social audit and the national machinery; neither transfer of the project nor completion of the works discharges what the award left unpaid.
• It is the landless family's title: for the labourer, tenant or artisan with no land to be priced under Section 23, the Section 31 award is the only award, which is why its census foundations and its completeness matter most to those with least.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• The Second Schedule (Topic 48): the menu the award serves from
• The R&R scheme (Topic 28): the award's foundation
• Possession (Topic 61): the gate the award controls
• Reference to the Authority (Topic 73): the family's remedy