The Section 46 Thresholds and the Quantification and Deposit of the R&R Amount: Section 47

Two mechanics complete the private-purchase and R&R chapter: the limits that decide when Section 46 bites at all, prescribed State by State, and Section 47, which lets rehabilitation obligations that can honestly be reduced to money be quantified and deposited, so that entitlements are secured in cash where cash is their real content. This note covers how the thresholds work, how quantification operates, and the line between what may be monetised and what may not.

1. The Thresholds

• Who sets them: the appropriate Government prescribes the limits of private purchase above which Section 46's R&R obligations attach, typically separate limits for rural and urban areas, set by each State for itself.
• Why they decide everything: below the limit, a purchase is an ordinary market transaction with no R&R consequence; at or above it, the filing, reference, award and land-use lock all engage, so the prescribed figure is the provision's real text, and States that set generous ceilings have, in effect, localised the section into disuse, the standing criticism Topic 96 returns to.
• Aggregation questions: the limit applies to the purchase the Act contemplates; assembly through staggered or related-party purchases below the line is the known evasion pattern, tested, when challenged, by substance rather than by the deeds' arithmetic.
• The checklist: any Section 46 question begins with two lookups, the State's prescribed limit, and the State's Article 254(2) amendments touching the section.

2. Quantification and Deposit: Section 47

Where the Collector is of the view that the obligations with respect to rehabilitation and resettlement can be quantified into monetary amounts, Section 47 permits those obligations to be discharged by payment or deposit of the quantified amount with the authority the Act and rules designate, which then administers disbursement to the entitled families. The provision is a settlement valve: many Second Schedule items are, by their own terms, money, the subsistence grant, the transportation and resettlement allowances, the artisan grant, the one-time payment option of the livelihood triad, and for these, quantification secures the family a fund rather than a promise, with the deposit made before the project proceeds and the family's account, named in the Section 31 award, receiving the money directly.

3. The Line Quantification Cannot Cross

• In-kind cores: entitlements the Schedule frames in kind, the constructed house, the command-area land in irrigation projects, the 20% developed land, employment where the family has chosen it, the Third Schedule's amenities, are not converted to cash at the acquirer's convenience; the Schedule's own cash-in-lieu options belong to the family's choice, not the Collector's.
• Quantification is not commutation: Section 47 quantifies what is already monetary in substance; reading it as a general power to buy out rehabilitation would collapse the Act's design, under which displacement is answered by restoration, not by a cheque alone, the reading the provision's place in the scheme and the beneficial-construction rule both reject.
• Security function: the deposit protects the family against the acquirer's later insolvency or indifference: once quantified and deposited, the entitlement is a fund in official custody, disbursable on the award's terms, and the possession gate and land-use lock release against the deposit rather than against performance promised for later.
• Dispute route: quantification disputes, the item wrongly monetised, the amount wrongly computed, travel like other R&R grievances: the Collector, the Commissioner, and the Section 64 reference to the Authority.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Section 46 (Topic 57): the obligations these mechanics serve
• The Second Schedule (Topic 48): which items are money and which are kind
• Payment and deposit (Topic 78): the compensation side's parallel machinery
• State amendments (Topic 96): where the limits are actually found