Section 105 and the Fourth Schedule: The Exempted Enactments

The 2013 Act repealed the 1894 Act, but India's biggest land-takers, highways, railways, coal, atomic energy, acquire under statutes of their own, and Section 105 keeps those thirteen enactments outside the Act while providing the bridge that brings the Act's compensation and R&R standards to them. This note covers the exemption, the Schedule's list, the bridge, and the field's resulting two-track structure.

1. The Exemption and the Bridge

The exemption (Section 105(1)): subject to the section, the Act's provisions do not apply to the enactments relating to land acquisition specified in the Fourth Schedule, their own procedures, notifications, objections, awards, continue to govern.
The flexible list (Section 105(2)): the Central Government may, by notification, omit from or add to the Fourth Schedule any enactment relating to acquisition, with the parliamentary laying discipline the section provides.
The bridge (Section 105(3) and (4)): the design obliges the Central Government to direct, by notification laid before Parliament, that the Act's provisions relating to the determination of compensation, and to rehabilitation and resettlement, per the First, Second and Third Schedules, apply to acquisitions under the exempted enactments, procedure stays sectoral, but the money and the rebuilding were meant to be universal, and the 2015 instrument that finally worked the bridge is Topic 88.

2. The Thirteen Enactments

The Fourth Schedule	Field
Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958	Protected monuments and sites
Atomic Energy Act, 1962	Nuclear establishments and minerals
Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development Act, 1957	Coal lands
Damodar Valley Corporation Act, 1948	The DVC's works
Electricity Act, 2003	Transmission and allied works
Indian Tramways Act, 1886	Tramways
Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, 1885	Mines beneath acquired land
Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978	Metro construction
National Highways Act, 1956	Highways: the busiest acquirer of all
Petroleum and Minerals Pipelines (Acquisition of Right of User in Land) Act, 1962	Pipeline rights of user
Railways Act, 1989	Railway land
Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property Act, 1952	Defence and Union requisition
Resettlement of Displaced Persons (Land Acquisition) Act, 1948	Partition-era resettlement

3. The Two-Track Field

Why the exemption exists: the sectoral statutes carry machinery built for their geometry, the highway's 3A notifications and competent authority, the pipeline's right-of-user model that acquires use rather than title, the coal Act's government-company vesting, and Parliament chose speed for linear and strategic infrastructure over one uniform procedure; the same choice Section 10's linear-projects exception makes inside the Act.
What the affected lose on the sectoral track: the SIA and its hearing, the consent referendum, the food-security bar, the Act's lapse clocks and its Authority, the procedural constitution of the 2013 regime stops at the Schedule's edge, surviving only as Article 300A's floor (the Bimal Kumar Shah sub-rights) and each statute's own process.
What they keep through the bridge: 2013-standard compensation and R&R per the Schedules, from 1 January 2015 by the Removal of Difficulties Order (Topic 88), with Tarsem Singh (2019) extending solatium and interest to highway acquisitions on equality grounds (Topic 120).
The examiner's frame: procedure sectoral, money universal: the Fourth Schedule exempts the machinery, never, after 2015, the measure.

⚠ Key point

Section 105: the Act does not apply to the thirteen Fourth Schedule enactments, National Highways Act, Railways Act, Coal Bearing Areas Act, Electricity Act, Atomic Energy Act, Metro Railways Act, the pipelines, tramways, mines, requisitioning, DVC, ancient monuments and displaced-persons statutes, whose own procedures govern; the Schedule is amendable by notification, and the section's bridge obliges extension of the Act's compensation and R&R standards to them, worked from 1 January 2015 by the Removal of Difficulties Order and reinforced by Tarsem Singh. Procedure sectoral, money universal.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

The 2015 Order (Topic 88): how the bridge was actually built
Tarsem Singh (Topic 120): equality finishing the bridge's gaps; the highways and railways interplays follow in Topics 106 and 107