At least 800 farmers affected by the upcoming Jewar airport in Gautam Buddh Nagar have been protesting against the loss of land, livelihood and inadequate compensation since 2017. Their main dissent is a government notification changing the status of the proposed site from rural to urban. This legally halves the compensation amount as per the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, under which compensation is two times the market rate for urban land and four times the market rate for rural land. “The notification of the area from rural to urban, months before the acquisition started, is the greatest injustice to the farmers,” Sunil Fauji, who is associated with the Kisan Ekta Sangh, told Land Conflict Watch.

The airport will be spread across 5,000 hectares and will be built in four phases on a public-private partnership basis. In the first phase, 1,328 hectares from across eight villages is being acquired to build two runways and is expected to be completed by 2023. The airport aims to reduce the load on Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and with a proposed six to eight runways, will be India’s largest once it is fully operational.

Although the airport has been in the pipeline since 2001, it did not get clearance due to a clause in the Civil Aviation Ministry guidelines for greenfield airports, which placed restrictions on building a civilian airport within 150 kilometres of an existing one. The NDA government relaxed this norm in 2016, and the project was cleared in 2017.

According to media reports, two days after the government issued a notification for land acquisition on October 30, 2018, several farmers filed affidavits with the district magistrate revoking their consent. “We were told by the tehsildar while signing the consent forms that we could revoke it at a later date. Section 11 has been invoked (laying down the procedure for issuing notification for land acquisition), but we still don’t have any compensation or rehabilitation details on paper. We were misled when they needed our consent,” said Tejpal Singh, a farmer, in an interview to News 18.

“In December 2018, the government simply added eight villages from where land is being acquired to a 2015 notification changing the nature of 80 villages. When 93 per cent of the revenue sources in the area are from agriculture, how can the area be notified from rural to urban? This violates Article 243 Q of the Constitution (the Article lays down the procedure for declaring an area urban),” said advocate Gautam Upadhyay in an interview to LCW. The petitions are currently being heard.

In February 2019, several farmers filed another petition at the Allahabad High Court demanding four times the compensation. They alleged that the acquisition process violates the LARR Act and that they were not given copies of the Social Impact Assessment. They also alleged that the area earmarked for the project was rural farmland that was notified as an urban area in 2015 but that its circle rate was not revised as per the urban sectors. Their petition was rejected by the Allahabad High Court in April 2019, clearing the way for land acquisition.

Protests against the project have continued despite the court’s ruling. According to media reports, in September 2019, 47 farmers were arrested as they proceeded to lay siege to the Jewar toll plaza. Three more petitions were filed at the Allahabad High Court in May, October and November 2019 challenging the validity of the government notification that changed the nature of the land from rural to urban and seeking higher compensation.

According to media reports, even as the cases are in court, the district administration has issued notices to the farmers over their refusal to hand over land. They have also been asked to discontinue agriculture. Farmers have protested against this and have urged all fellow farmers to continue farming.

On January 27, 2020, protesting farmers clashed with the police when the latter tried to remove them from the protest site. The farmers pelted stones and shouted anti-government slogans. They also damaged the bus in which the police had arrived, in addition to a dozen other vehicles of the district administration.

In June 2020, it was reported that the Uttar Pradesh government will start notifying the land in Jewar Bengar village to rehabilitate approximately 3,600 project-affected families. They will be rehabilitated on 50 hectares of land in the village, whose native 592 families will have to give up farming and animal husbandry to make way for the rehabilitated families.

Additional District Magistrate (land acquisition) Balram Singh said in a media report, "A number of these 592 families do not have a permanent house in Jewar Bengar but have been carrying out farming in the area for decades. They have submitted objections and suggestions that have been considered." The Gautam Budh Nagar district administration has asked officials to proceed with the land acquisition and to compensate the natives of Jewar Bengar with two times the circle rate of land.

Among the 592 families, around 122 of them do not own any land and are more prone to losing their livelihood. According to a news report, the farmers say they will not give up possession of their land until full compensation is paid. The administration has said it will address their grievances before proceeding.

Meanwhile, in an Order dated August 25, 2020, the special secretary to civil aviation, Surendra Singh has asked the district magistrate to revise the compensation based on the LARR 2013 as per the definition of rural population.

However, villagers claim that the compensation has not been revised. Furthermore, members of Jewar Airport Sangharsh Samiti said to LCW that they have filed a PIL in Allahabad High Court seeking rehabilitation claiming that residents of six villages have been forcefully evicted even as the construction of the rehabilitation colonies are yet to be finished. Singh said that several families among the affected people are living in makeshift tents as there houses are demolished.

On July 6, 2023, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government issued a notification to carry out the 'social impact assessment' (SIA) for acquisition of another 2,053 hectares of land for the third  for the acquisition of another 2,053 hectares of land for the third phase of expansion for the upcoming Noida International Airport (NIA) in Jewar.

Arun Vir Singh, CEO of Noida International Airport Limited (NIAL), told the Mint that a total of 1,888 hectares of land from 14 villages in Jewar tehsil of Gautam Buddh Nagar is to be acquired, and the SIA is scheduled to be carried out by Gautam Buddha University and completed by this August 30.
"The notification for the acquisition of 2,053 hectares of land for the third phase expansion of the airport was issued last week. Land for the first phase (1,365 hectares) and the second phase (1,334 hectares) has already been acquired," Singh added.