Land acquisition Bill on hold after Mamata puts her foot down

Land acquisition Bill on hold after Mamata puts her foot down
The Financial Express, July 25, 2009, Page 11

J P Yadav, New Delhi

With railway minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee putting her foot down on the land acquisition Bill, even threatening to quit at the Cabinet meeting last night, the UPA government has decided to put the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007 and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007 on the backburner for now and look for a way out.

Sources in the government said that the Bills have been kept in abeyance and the move to introduce them during the current session of Parliament has been dropped. The Congress leadership is now looking for a way out given that Banerjee’s TMC is the second largest party in the UPA.

Banerjee on Friday stayed away from Parliament, skipping lunch with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and others in the House. She sent her junior minister to the Rajya Sabha that she was scheduled to attend. In Lok Sabha too, only a couple of Trinamool members were seen, that too for a very brief period.

At the meeting of the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, Banerjee was learnt to have rejected the twin Bills, making it clear that these failed to protect the interests of poor farmers. She was learnt to have told the Cabinet that she would be left with no option but oppose the Bills in Parliament.

With Banerjee not prepared to budge and even threatening to quit, the Cabinet was learnt to have decided to keep the Bills in abeyance till a solution was arrived at.

Word spread that Banerjee was boycotting Parliament but TMC MP Sudeep Bandopadhyaya denied any such move. He said they have differences over the land acquisition Bill but there was no question of separation. He denied reports that Banerjee had walked out of the Cabinet meeting and said she had lodged her dissent.

Bandopadhaya said they wanted the Bills to be placed before a Standing Committee or Joint Parliamentary Board. He said public opinion should be gathered. “We are firmly against any forcible acquisition of farmer land. We want industries but not at the cost of poor farmers,” he said.

According to TMC sources, Banerjee was learnt to be against the very core of the proposed Bill that talks about a private developer:state ratio of 70:30. The Bill proposes that the state would acquire 30% of the land only after private developers buy 70% of the land directly from farmers.

Banerjee wants that the state in no way should get involved in the acquisition process and that 100% of the land should directly be purchased by private developers. She also insists that the Bill should contain penal provision to check the use of money or muscle power by developers to acquire land.

The previous UPA government got the Bill passed in the last session of the 14th Lok Sabha before the elections. But the Bill lapsed and must be re-introduced. The Congress had claimed that the amended Bill was historic in the sense that it ensured rehabilitation before acquisition and protected interests of farmers and the tribals. The proposed Bill was prepared setting aside many important and unanimous recommendations of a Parliamentary Standing Committee.