(1.) The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 ( the 2013 Act for short), confers rights not only on those whose lands, and other immovable property, is to be acquired by the State, but also on families which do not own land, but one of whose members is an agricultural labourer, an agricultural tenant, an artisan or a share-cropper whose primary source of livelihood is adversely affected by the acquisition of land. Certain rights are also conferred by the 2013 Act on the Scheduled Tribes, other traditional forest dwellers who have lost their forest rights, gatherers of forest produce, hunters, fisher-folk and boatsmen, and on those who have been assigned lands by the State Government.
(2.) While G.O.Ms. No.123 dated 30.07.2015 claims to protect the interests of the land owners by offering them a compensation higher than their entitlement under the 2013 Act, do G.O.Ms. No. 190 dated 10.08.2016 and G.O.Ms. No. 191 dated 15.08.2016, which seek to provide certain welfare measures to such of those families whose only means of livelihood would be affected by the procurement of land under G.O.Ms. No.123 dated 30.07.2015, adequately safeguard the statutory rights, conferred on these marginalised sections of society, under the 2013 Act; and can these statutory rights, conferred on these deprived Sections, either be waived by them or circumvented by the State Government in the exercise of its executive power either under Art. 162 or Art. 298 of the Constitution?
(3.) In these batch of Writ Petitions, 1 wherein the present interlocutory applications were filed, the validity of G.O.Ms. No.75 dated 05.06.2015 and G.O.Ms. No. 123 dated 30.07.2015, along with its amendment in G.O.Ms. No. 190 dated 07.10.2015 and G.O.Ms. No.214 dated 28.11.2015, are questioned as ultra vires the 2013 Act, and a consequential direction is sought to the respondents to follow and implement the provisions of the 2013 Act, and not to resort to any negotiation process or forcible dispossession or acquisition. The petitioners, in this batch of Writ Petitions, are either land owners or assignees of land or other affected persons living in villages which will be submerged on construction of several irrigation projects by the State. In W.P. No.25036 of 2016, several of the petitioners are agricultural labourers, village artisans and landless poor who are dependent, on the lands purchased by the State under G.O.Ms. No. 123 dated 30.07.2015, for their livelihood.