New Delhi Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday said the cost of acquiring land for the industry would rise once the new land acquisition Bill was enacted, but the benefits that the law would bring to the people affected by industrial projects would outweigh its costs. He said the proposed law which had been sent to a Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by BJP MP Sumitra Mahajan, was aimed at striking a balance between the need of infrastructure creation and giving a better deal to the project affected families. “If the standing committee gives its reports within the next two months, we are sure of passing the Bill in the next or winter session of Parliament,” said Ramesh. The proposed law seeks to replace the 117-year-old Land Acquisition Bill and for the first time integrates both land acquisition and resettlement and rehabilitation package. Ramesh also said the proposed piece of legislation would set a benchmark for the state governments to follow in land acquisition and rehabilitation. He added that the country needed to create close to 10 million jobs annually during the next decade in the non-agricultural sector. While the earlier version of the Bill talked about the compensation to the tune of six times the market value of land as suggested by the National Advisory Council and Rahul Gandhi, the final Bill brought down the compensation amount to four times the market value of land to the owners. “The cost of land acquisition should not be prohibitive and instead support rapid expansion of infrastructure through setting up of industries,” said Ramesh. He also said the adverse impact, if any, of the proposed law on affected families - economic, environmental, social or cultural - must be assessed in a participatory and transparent manner. The final version of the Bill, prepared after pre-legislative consultation with various stakeholders, clearly states that multi-crop irrigated land could be acquired "as a last resort measure", he noted. The first draft had said the government did not envisage acquiring "any multi-crop irrigated land" for public purposes. "To ensure food security, multi-crop irrigated land shall be acquired only as a last resort measure," the Bill said. It also proposes to develop an equivalent area of culturable wasteland, if multi-crop land is acquired. The Bill also says only rehabilitation and resettlement provisions will apply when private companies buy land for a project - more than 100 acre in rural areas or more than 50 acre in urban areas.