High Court strikes down more land acquisition deals by the Noida administration
For many years now, the areas of Noida, Greater Noida, and Noida Extension near the capital city have been the center of a building boom. The many Governments of Uttar Pradesh in the past (run by different political parties such as the BJP, SP, BSP) have all played a part in this building boom, leveraging their closeness to Delhi and meeting the needs of a huge number of people who were bound for the national capital but could not afford to buy homes in Delhi. So, the Government would acquire land and give this to society and builders, who in turn would build a variety of residential units and sell these to an eager crowd of buyers.
Now, one would argue that this is part of development. After all, agriculture is seen as the starting point of economic activity, and in order to progress further, you need to build industry and residential units, and those need land. So, acquiring land for this purpose is necessary, and it would seem that the Government would be in the best position to get into the role of acquiring land and then handing this over to the people doing the building.
However, the recent past in India has been hit by a number of issues related to this very purpose, with land acquisition coming under dispute in a number of states, and the situation seems to scream out for a land acquisition act that promised to be equitable to all. The Congress has not been able to come up with such an Act because of its political issues with its allies, most notably Mamta Banerjee; and it would also seem that the Congress may be delaying such an Act so that it can apply political pressure in the prime state of Uttar Pradesh.
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