Land Acquisition Compensation in India: How to Object

If your land is being acquired, two numbers decide most of what happens next. The first is 60 days, which is the window under Section 15 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 to file written objections to the preliminary notification. The second is six weeks from the Collector’s award, which is the window under Section 64 to ask for a reference to the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority if the money is too low. Almost every complaint we hear about land acquisition compensation in India is really a complaint about one of those two windows having closed.

The second thing worth knowing before anything else is that the award is not a take it or leave it offer. You can receive the compensation under protest and still fight for more. Accepting the amount without recording a protest is what forecloses the challenge, and it is done at the counter every day by people who assume the payment is unconditional.

How the compensation figure is built

Land acquisition compensation in India is not a negotiated figure. Section 26 fixes market value as the higher of these, for land of a similar type in the nearest village or vicinity:

• the minimum land value specified in the Indian Stamp Act 1899 for the registration of sale deeds in that area, which is the circle rate or collector guideline rate; or
• the average sale price worked out from the highest fifty percent of the registered sale deeds of the preceding three years; or
• the consented amount, where the acquisition is for a private company or a public private partnership.

That base is then built up. The layers matter, because objections at the award stage are usually about one specific layer rather than the whole figure.

Layer	Provision	What it covers
Market value	Section 26	Circle rate or highest half of comparable sales, whichever is higher
Multiplier	First Schedule	1.00 in urban areas; between 1.00 and 2.00 in rural areas depending on distance from the urban centre, as notified by the state
Assets on the land	Section 27	House, well, tubewell, boundary wall, standing crop, trees, irrigation works
Other factors	Section 28	Damage from severing the land, loss of earnings, cost of shifting residence or business
Solatium	Section 30(1)	An additional 100 percent of the compensation amount
Interim interest	Section 30(3)	12 percent per annum on market value from the Section 11 notification to the award or possession, whichever is earlier

Rehabilitation and resettlement sits alongside this and is not the same thing as compensation. The Second Schedule lists minimum entitlements for affected families, including a housing unit, a subsistence grant, transport cost, a one time resettlement allowance and either employment or a one time payment or an annuity. The rupee figures in the Schedule are revised by notification, so check the current notification rather than an old summary. The Third Schedule lists the infrastructure that has to be provided at the resettlement site.

Two undervaluations recur in awards. Standing fruit trees and a functioning tubewell are frequently valued as scrap or omitted, and the yield based valuation of an orchard is very different from the timber value of the wood. And where a strip is taken out of the middle of a holding, leaving the remainder without road access or without a viable size, Section 28 requires the damage from that severance to be paid for, which is often simply not assessed.

The 60 day objection window

Acquisition begins with a preliminary notification under Section 11, published in the Official Gazette, in two daily newspapers including one in the regional language, in the local language on the panchayat, municipality or district office notice board, and on the appropriate government’s website. For most projects a Social Impact Assessment under Section 4 comes before it.

Under Section 15, any interested person may object within 60 days from the date of publication of that notification. Objections can go to the area and suitability of the land, to the justification for the acquisition, to the findings of the Social Impact Assessment, or to the extent of public purpose claimed. The Collector must give the objector a hearing, and then submit a report with his recommendations to the appropriate government, whose decision on that report is final.

Two practical points. Objections filed at this stage are the only realistic chance to change what is acquired. Once the declaration under Section 19 is published, the argument narrows to how much you are paid. And a bare objection letter is not worth much. What moves the needle is a documented case: the khasra and khatauni entries, a demarcation showing what the acquisition leaves behind, photographs of the structures and plantation, and comparable registered sale deeds from the same vicinity. That evidence pack is also what you will use again at the award stage, so it is not wasted work. Assembling it, and reading the revenue record correctly, is ordinary real estate and property work done under a deadline.

The deadlines that can make an acquisition lapse

The 2013 Act put hard outer limits on the state, which the 1894 Act largely lacked.

• Declaration within 12 months. Section 19 requires the declaration of acquisition to follow the preliminary notification within twelve months, failing which the preliminary notification is deemed rescinded.
• Award within 12 months. Section 25 requires the Collector to make the award within twelve months of the declaration. If he does not, the entire acquisition proceeding lapses. The appropriate government can extend the period, but only for reasons recorded in writing and published.
• Possession only after payment. Section 38 permits the Collector to take possession only after ensuring that full payment of compensation and the monetary part of the rehabilitation entitlements has been made, within three months and six months of the award respectively. Infrastructure entitlements follow within eighteen months.
• Return of unused land. Where acquired land remains unutilised for five years from the date of taking possession, Section 101 allows it to be returned to the original owner or to the state land bank, subject to how the state has framed the rule.

For older files begun under the Land Acquisition Act 1894 and not completed, Section 24 governs. A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court settled the interpretation in 2020, holding that an acquisition lapses only where the award was made five years or more before 1 January 2014 and physical possession was not taken and compensation was not paid, and that money deposited in the government treasury counts as payment even if the landowner never collected it. Many lapse claims filed on the earlier and looser reading no longer survive that decision, so a case built on Section 24 has to be tested against it honestly before filing.

If the award is too low

Section 64 is the route, and it is the most common way land acquisition compensation in India actually gets increased. A person interested who has not accepted the award applies in writing to the Collector, not to the Authority directly, requiring the matter to be referred for determination.

The timing is strict and it has two branches. If you were present or represented when the award was made, the application must be filed within six weeks of the date of the award. Otherwise it must be filed within six weeks of receiving the Collector’s notice under Section 21(2), or within six months of the date of the award, whichever expires first. The Collector may entertain a late application if satisfied there was sufficient cause, but that is a discretion and not something to plan around.

The reference goes to the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority, which functions as a court for this purpose. The claimant leads evidence on valuation: registered sale deeds of comparable land from the same period, a valuer’s report, agricultural yield records for orchards or irrigated land, and evidence of the potential use of the land at the date of the notification. The Authority cannot award less than the Collector did.

Where the Authority enhances the amount, Section 80 provides for interest at nine percent per annum from the date possession was taken until payment, rising to fifteen percent per annum for any part that remains unpaid beyond one year from that date. An appeal from the Authority’s award lies to the High Court under Section 74 within sixty days.

Section 96 provides that no income tax or stamp duty is to be levied on any award or agreement made under the Act. How that sits with the Income Tax Act has been the subject of departmental clarifications and differs between agricultural and non agricultural land, so take advice before treating a receipt as tax free.

Highways, railways and the exempted laws

Not every acquisition runs on the 2013 Act’s procedure. Thirteen central enactments listed in its Fourth Schedule, including the National Highways Act 1956, the Railways Act, the Metro Railways legislation, the Coal Bearing Areas Act and the Electricity Act, keep their own process. In 2015 the Central Government extended the 2013 Act’s compensation and rehabilitation provisions to those enactments, so the money is worked out on the 2013 formula even though the steps are different.

The difference that catches people is the timeline. Under the National Highways Act 1956 the notification is issued under Section 3A and objections must be filed within 21 days of its publication, not 60. The declaration follows under Section 3D, compensation is determined by a competent authority under Section 3G, and a landowner who disputes the amount goes to an arbitrator appointed by the Central Government under Section 3G(5) rather than to a civil court or the LARR Authority. An award of that arbitrator is then open to challenge under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, which is a different and narrower jurisdiction. We handle those challenges as part of our litigation and arbitration work.

Who gets the money

Compensation is paid to the persons interested, and that is wider than the recorded owner. Section 3 of the 2013 Act brings in tenants, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers whose livelihood depends on the land, and, for scheduled tribes, forest dwellers with rights recognised under the forest rights law. Where there is a dispute about apportionment, the Collector refers it for determination rather than deciding it himself.

Common errors at this stage are avoidable. Land standing in a deceased father’s name with four heirs will hold up disbursement until the succession is sorted, and that is a good reason to complete a partition of the family holding before an acquisition notification lands rather than after. A mortgage noted on the record will divert part of the money to the lender. And an agreement to sell that was never registered gives the intending buyer no claim on the compensation at all.

This is general information about the law and not legal advice on any particular acquisition. The right step depends on where your file sits in the sequence, what the notification says and what the revenue record shows. If a notification has been published over your land, or an award has been announced and you think it is short, write to us through the contact page with the notification and the award copy so the position can be assessed on your own papers.