The Removal of Difficulties Order, 2015: Extending Compensation and R&R to the Fourth Schedule Acts

The promise that highway and railway oustees would get 2013-standard money was made in Section 105's bridge, but the bridge was actually built by an unusual instrument: the RFCTLARR (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2015, issued under Section 113 after the ordinance route collapsed, directing that the Act's compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement provisions apply to the Fourth Schedule enactments with effect from 1 January 2015. This note covers the Order, the tangled road to it, and the questions it settled and left.

1. The Road to the Order

• The design: Section 105(3) obliged a notification, within the Act's first year and laid before Parliament, extending the First, Second and Third Schedule standards to the exempted enactments, the bridge as Parliament drew it.
• The ordinance detour: the 2014 Ordinance instead substituted Section 105(3) to apply the compensation and R&R provisions to the Fourth Schedule enactments directly from 1 January 2015; the Ordinance was repromulgated through 2015 and then allowed to lapse when the Amendment Bill failed (Topics 94 and 95), threatening to take the bridge down with it.
• The rescue: the Government issued the RFCTLARR (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2015, dated 28 August 2015, under Section 113, directing that the Act's provisions relating to the determination of compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement shall apply to cases of land acquisition under the Fourth Schedule enactments, with effect from 1 January 2015, the lapsed ordinance's beneficial core preserved by executive order.

2. What the Order Does

• The entitlement: acquisitions under the National Highways Act, the Railways Act, the Coal Bearing Areas Act and the Schedule's other statutes, where the compensation stage falls on or after 1 January 2015, carry the First Schedule computation (market value, multiplier, assets, 100% solatium, the additional amounts) and the Second and Third Schedule R&R, administered through each statute's own machinery, the highway's competent authority computing a 2013-Act sum.
• What it does not change: the sectoral procedures stand: no SIA, no consent referendum, no LARR Authority; objections, arbitration and appeals run as each statute provides (the NH Act's arbitrator, for instance), now applying the new measure.
• The cut-off's edge: awards completed before 1 January 2015 sat outside the Order, creating the two-class problem among highway oustees that Union of India v. Tarsem Singh (2019) answered on Article 14 grounds, holding solatium and interest applicable to NH Act acquisitions of the preceding era too, equality finishing what the Order began (Topic 120).

3. The Instrument's Own Questions

The Order is law in force and has been applied nationwide, but its form repays a careful student's attention. Section 113 authorises orders, published and laid before Parliament, to remove difficulties in giving effect to the Act's provisions, within the time limits the section sets, and the 2015 Order used that power to perform, in substance, the extension that Section 105(3) and (4) had assigned to a different, parliamentary-laid notification route after the ordinance amendments lapsed. The defence is functional: a real difficulty existed, the Act's first-year deadline had been overtaken by the ordinance seesaw, and the Order executed the statute's own declared intention, beneficially. The criticism is formal: removal-of-difficulties powers are for smoothing edges, not for substituting the operative route of a scheduled reform. Courts have proceeded on the Order's validity, Tarsem Singh building beside rather than against it, and for practice the position is settled: from 1 January 2015, Fourth Schedule acquisitions pay 2013-Act compensation and carry its R&R, whatever the instrument's doctrinal aesthetics.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Section 105 and the Schedule (Topic 87): the bridge's blueprint
• The 2014 Ordinance (Topic 94): the detour that forced the Order
• Tarsem Singh (Topic 120): the cut-off cured
• The National Highways interplay (Topic 106): the Order at work on the busiest track