Verifying a coal-block award file before the SDO signs
A coal block expansion near a village in a Scheduled Area of Jharkhand is expected to displace 320 households. The draft award placed before the Sub-divisional Officer values 150 acres of village land at Rs 18.75 crore. The tehsil circle rate for the same class of land is Rs 15 lakh per acre. The police verification team's household list shows 348 names; on checking, 26 names appear twice under slightly different spellings and 9 belong to a hamlet outside the block boundary. Of the 320 genuine households, 58 belong to a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group hamlet sited on the lower slope. The gram sabha resolution attached to the file carries 41 signatures from a meeting held on a working day at 11 a.m. Residents of the PVTG hamlet state that nobody informed them of the meeting. A constable attached to the circle office has been asked for a written verification note before the file moves to the district level.
1. Check the per-acre valuation in the draft award and state what the officer should report.
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Straight rate. Rs 18.75 crore / 150 acres = Rs 12.5 lakh per acre.
Compare with circle rate. Rs 12.5 lakh against Rs 15 lakh per acre = shortfall of Rs 2.5 lakh per acre, i.e. 16.7 per cent below the circle rate. For 150 acres the difference is Rs 3.75 crore.
The harder question - does the figure include solatium? Under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, the base value cannot be below the higher of the circle rate or the average of comparable sales, and 100 per cent solatium is payable over that value in addition to other entitlements. If Rs 18.75 crore is meant to be solatium-inclusive, the base collapses to about Rs 6.25 lakh per acre - less than half the circle rate. Either way the draft is defective.
What to write. Ask the land acquisition officer to state in writing whether solatium is included, and to recompute so that the base is not less than the circle rate. Do not certify the award; record that the valuation, as drafted, cannot be defended and that the discrepancy is a matter the SDO must settle before the file moves up. The constable's role is verification and flagging, not valuation - but silence on a 16.7 per cent gap would later look like collusion.
2. Reconcile the household figures and state exactly what the verification note should say.
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Reconciliation. 348 names listed, minus 26 duplicates, minus 9 households outside the block boundary = 313.
Against 320 genuine households on the field list, that leaves 7 households unaccounted for. Those 7 are the live risk: they may be tenants, sharecroppers, forest-dwelling families without a record of title, or families whose names were dropped in retyping. They must not be treated as non-existent simply because they are not in the list.
What the note should state.
- The deduplicated, boundary-checked figure is 313, not 348, so the entitlement roll cannot be closed at either number.
- The 7 missing households require door-to-door verification with hamlet-level maps and photographs of the dwelling, with signatures of two independent witnesses.
- The 58 PVTG households must be shown as a separately identifiable group in the roll, because PVTG families carry distinct entitlement and consent safeguards; lumping them into a general household count defeats those safeguards.
- Duplicate entries are not clerical trivia: each duplicate is a potential double payment or a displaced family that will be denied compensation and will then approach the police post as a grievance. Judgement. Recommend that payment be released on the verified roll of 313 plus the 7 pending cases after field check, and that a written grievance register be opened at the circle office so that families not on the roll have a recorded route to object.
3. Assess the validity of the gram sabha resolution and advise the SDO what to do before acquisition proceeds.
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Quantitative check. 41 signatures against 320 households = about 12.8 per cent of affected households. Even allowing several signatures per household, this represents a small fraction of the village and no representation from the 58 PVTG households, who say they were not informed.
Qualitative check. A meeting on a working day at 11 a.m. is precisely when daily-wage and forest-dependent households are away; the timing itself is evidence of non-consultation. Absence of notice to a hamlet sitting on the land to be taken is a substantive defect, not a technical one.
Legal frame. In Scheduled Areas, land acquisition requires the consent of the gram sabha, and PESA and the Fifth Schedule provisions require consultation with the gram sabha on land and displacement questions. A resolution signed by a fraction of the village, with a whole hamlet unrepresented, cannot be treated as that consent.
Advice to record.
- Treat the resolution as not established; do not certify it.
- Require a fresh gram sabha with notice in writing and by beat of drum in each hamlet, at a time and place fixed with the village head, and with records in Hindi and the local language.
- Hold a separate recorded consultation with the PVTG hamlet, with their own representatives speaking.
- Minutes with attendance, objections and signatures of the gram sabha secretary, plus a copy to the district legal cell for opinion. A constable's note flagging these points is what keeps a later award from being stayed.