JOIN USLand bill tabled in LS amid uproar
The Centre on Tuesday introduced the land acquisition amendment bill in the Lok Sabha amid uproar by the Opposition.
The government also faced opposition from within as Maharashtra-based allies Shiv Sena and Swabhimani Paksha, too, refused to support the bill in its present format.
Despite the growing clamour, sources said the Centre was open to a brief and not a major intervention on the contentious legislation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told party MPs to spread awareness about the bill to “bust the myth” being spread by non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties.
A bill to amend the Mines and Minerals Act for introducing the system of auction in granting mining concessions, too, was tabled in the LS overlooking opposition by the Biju Janata Dal and the Congress which demanded that states’ consent be taken.
Rural Development Minister Birender Singh introduced the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015, in the LS to replace an ordinance promulgated by the NDA government on December 30. The entire Opposition, including the Congress, RJD, JD(U), SP, TMC, Left parties, AAP, NCP, and the INLD, walked out in protest against the bill, which they dubbed “anti-farmer” and “anti-poor” but pro-corporate.
They demanded the Modi government to bring back the original bill as conceived by the erstwhile-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
Interestingly, Swabhimani Paksha’s lone MP Raju Shetti, an NDA ally, sided with the Opposition to register his dissent against the bill in the House.
Outside Parliament, another NDA partner from Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena, decided not to attend a meeting of the ruling coalition called in the evening to watch a presentation on the land bill by Singh and clear their doubts, if any.
“There is no question of the Shiv Sena supporting any law that goes against the interest of farmers,” Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said in a statement issued in Mumbai. “I have received objections but this can be discussed when the bill is taken into consideration,” Birender Singh said amid noisy scenes in the House.
Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge summed up the Opposition’s sentiment with a critical remark: “This is not right that despite opposition it (NDA government) introduced the bill. It did not send the bill either to the standing committee or select committees. This attitude of the government of bulldozing bills is not right.”
Earlier, TMC leader Saugata Roy, who was the first to speak, objected to the ordinance not having a social impact assessment in five different types of projects for which land would be taken. He expressed reservation on Chapter 3 of the bill that talked about multi-crop irrigated land that could be acquired which Roy argued would cloud the food security scheme.
The dissent centred around these two issues and another on “compromise” of consent clause that was there in the original legislation seeking 70 per cent of land owners’ nod before acquisition. Replying to the Opposition’s charges, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said: “Minority cannot dictate over the majority. We are not bulldozing.”
Recalling the June 2014 meeting in Vigyan Bhavan, he said that representatives of all states and Union territories made a representation that the land act passed by the UPA made development impossible.
Digging up the past, Naidu informed that in 2011, the then Maharashtra chief minister wrote a letter to then rural development minister Jairam Ramesh opposing the act.