Priya Parker and Sarita Vanka, of the PRS Legislative Research initiative, produced a very good brief on the Land Acquisition Act Amendment Bill 2007. The article goes into issues such as the setting up of a disputes authority, the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee established to examine the question of SEZs and Land, and contains a matrix showing how 'public purpose' (with respect to eminent domain/forced acquisition) has been defined in other countries.
This Bill lapsed with the dissolving of the last (2004-09) Lok Sabha, but is to be pursued by the current government. The Left parties that supported the 2004-09 UPA government claimed to have influenced this Bill for the better, stating that Congress and other centrist parties working on their own would not have created any nearly as progressive (not that the Bill itself is a model piece of legislation in any case). It will therefore be interesting to see whether the current (non-Left-reliant) UPA government, post May 2009, will promote an improved, or possibly inferior, Bill.
Either way, the Bill will need to be seen in the context of whatever legislation is introduced to substitute for the similarly stalled/lapsed Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill which was also the the subject of analysis. The Left parties (the CPI-M in particular) also claimed to have had a positive influence on successive drafts of that legislation -- just as it claimed also to have played a major role in getting the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 200 passed (an inflated claim, at best). Again, time will tell whether the new dispensation, in which the UPA government is no longer reliant on Left party support for its parliamentary majoriy, leads to better or worse (or just the same) legislation.
Indeed, lapsed legislation that is subsequently revived provides a potentially revealing window on the effect of party/parliamentary reconfiguration on the substance of policy change.
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