Land Acquisition Act and it’s misuse

In all these 65+ years of independence there is not even one law that was enacted for which our successive governments can be proud of it. All most every single central act is enacted by the erstwhile British Governments. Over the years our governments misused those laws which were meant for public benefit. One among those several laws is Land Acquisition Act of 1894. The sole intention of this law was to give power to the government to acquire a private property for the purposes of public benefit and use. The public purpose has been defined very clearly which reads like this under section 5(f) of the said act.
5*[(f) the expression "public purpose" includes-- (i) the provision of village-sites, or the extension, planned development or improvement of existing village-sites; (ii) the provision of land for town or rural planning; (iii) the provision of land for planned development of land from public funds in pursuance of any scheme or policy of Government and subsequent disposal thereof in whole or in part by lease, assignment or outright sale with the object of securing further development as planned; (iv) the provision of land for a corporation owned or controlled by the State; (v) the provision of land for residential purposes to the poor or landless or to persons residing in areas affected by natural calamities, or to persons displaced or affected by reason of the implementation of any scheme undertaken by Government, any local authority or a corporation owned or controlled by the State; (vi) the provision of land for carrying out any educational, housing, health or slum clearance scheme sponsored by Government or by any authority established by Government for carrying out any such scheme, or, with the prior approval of the appropriate Government, by a local authority, or a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, or under any corresponding law for the time being in force in a State, or a co-operative society within the meaning of any law relating to co-operative societies for the time being in force in any State; (vii) the provision of land for any other scheme of development sponsored by Government, or, with the prior approval of the appropriate Government, by a local authority; (viii) the provision of any premises or building for locating a public office, but does not include acquisition of land for Companies;]
Nowhere in the definition is it mentioned that a private property whether it is rural or urban can be acquired for the purpose of commercialization or change the nature of it for commercial purposes. It is also specifically prohibited the acquisition of land for Companies. But over the years every single government by using state force acquiring rural agricultural lands which are under cultivation only to be handed over to Companies. These Companies get those lands for a throw away price and getting millions and millions of rupees as subsidies. Because state power the victims are helpless and suffer the losses. Once in a while a leader like Ms Mamata Banerjee raises the flag of revolt against the system and successful in getting back the land. The incidents like Nandigram do not happen all the time. Under the guise of SEZ’s a new trend is set by that any agricultural land can be acquired and converted to non agricultural purposes. The common settled laws speak that whenever any kind of wealth is discovered under the ground whether it may be a mine, hidden treasure it should be belong to the Government. The private individual has got no right to it. At the outset itself this law is bad. The British with the sole ill intention of grabbing the wealth of India enacted this law. Our governments gave a new twist to it. Whenever such wealth is discovered then it should go to the private companies. The real owners to that wealth will get nothing out of it. In the present day world oil or natural gas are real treasures hidden under the ground. If it is high seas then the Government of India can claim rights over the same and lease those rights to any private party. But definitely not on the ground especially when the said land belongs individual farmers. In the Krishna – Godavari Basin huge amounts natural gas is detected. The Government of Andhra Pradesh swung into action grabbed those agricultural lands forcibly from the poor farmers and handed over the same to a private enterprise the Reliance Group. The Governments of AP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, UP and many more governments have acquired agricultural lands from poor farmers only to be handed over to the companies like Wipro, Infosys, and TCS just to name few at throw away prices. All this is done in the name industrial development. We don’t want industrial development at the cost of agriculture.