Acquisition and Requisition of property falls in the concurrent list , hence both the Centre and the State Government can make laws on the matter. There are a number of local and specific laws which provide for acquisition of land under them but the main law that deals with acquisition is the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

This Ministry of Rural Development being the administrative ministry in the union government to administer the central legislation on land acquisition, any proposal relating to amendment of the Act by the centre has to be taken up by the Department of Land Resources under the ministry. Department of Land Resources acts as the nodal agency for land resource management and all land based development programmes have been brought under this department. All State legislative proposals covering any enactment of the subject of acquisition and requisition of property or any other state legislation having a bearing upon the acquisition and requisition of land, has to be examined by the department.

Similarly, the matters pertaining to housing and urban development have been assigned by the Constitution of India to the State Governments. The Constitutions (74th Amendment) Act have further delegated many of these functions to the urban local bodies.

Ministry of Urban Development is the nodal ministry at the Central level and its constitutional and legal authority is limited only to Delhi and other Union Territories and to the subject which State Legislatures authorize the Union Parliament to legislate.

The urban development ministry administers the Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Act, 1976 as well as the Urban Land (Ceiling & Regulation) Repeal Act, 1999 which impose of a ceiling on both ownership and possession of vacant land in urban agglomerations.

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