NITI Aayog’s Arvind Panagariya advises states to come up with their own framework, finds Land Acquisition Act draconian!

Calling the existing Land Acquisition Act as ‘draconian’, Arvind Panagariya, the vice chairman of NITI Aayog has asked states to follow the Tamil Nadu model for land acquisition laws.
"Tamil Nadu has a different Act or an amended Act in place since January 5, 2015. It has been almost 7-8 months, very few people knew about it. Tamil Nadu has, in fact, amended the 2013 Act (Land Act) and it applies to their state," Panagariya said in an interview to CNBC TV18.

He added that the Act got the Presidential assent and that other states should follow the same strategy. "I was one of the very strong advocates even before I came to the NITI Aayog, that the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, was a bit draconian for the simple reason that some of the very important cases where public purpose is actually at stake, the acquisition would take at least 4-5 years," he said.

Panagariya had suggested the same to the government even before assuming the office at NITI Aayog. "So I advocated myself before reforming the Act and also advocated actually reforming the Act centrally because one state at a time is a longer process," he added.

It should be noted that earlier Finance Minister Arun Jaitley too had asked the states to come up with their own Land Act with the Centre’s approval.

The view of having separate land laws of different states emerged after the meeting of the Governing Council of NITI Aayog with chief ministers in July this year.