Sonia to take final call on land acquisition Bill

Ally Mamata Banerjee wants major changes in the contentious Bill.

Congress managers have left it to party president Sonia Gandhi to take the final call on introducing the contentious land acquisition amendment Bill during the current session of Parliament.

As Railway Minister and Congress’ coveted ally Mamata Banerjee wants radical changes in the Bill and is totally opposed to presenting the Bill in its present form in Parliament, the Congress leadership wants Gandhi to take the political decision.

“There are some issues involved. We have to talk to the Congress president to take a decision,” Finance Minister and Leader of the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee told Business Standard.

Rural Development Minister C P Joshi is in favour of immediate presentation of the Bill in the original form, but Banerjee wants changes before placing the Bill in the House.

Banerjee’s party, the Trinamool Congress, wants four major changes in the present Bill. These are — landowners should have legal right to buy back their land if the proposed industry doesn’t take off within the stipulated time, no government role in acquiring land to set up industries, no industry in agricultural land, and land cannot be acquired forcibly against the wishes of the farmers.

The land acquisition amendments were placed in the previous Lok Sabha along with the Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy Bill. But the Bill lapsed as the 14th Lok Sabha came to an end in May. The land Bill amendment will enable the states to acquire 30 per cent land if the private players manage to buy the rest.

A large section of the Congress, including Pranab Mukherjee, thinks there is no harm in tabling the two Bills in Parliament in the original form. Their logic is: let the Bills be placed in the House.

Changes can always be incorporated later after the twin Bills come back from the Standing Committee. Even Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal is a strong supporter of this path.

But Banerjee doesn’t see much merit in this arrangement and wants the government to table a revised land acquisition Bill. She has no problem with the other Bill — the Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy Bill. Congress managers have left it to Gandhi as she played a key role earlier in pushing these bills aimed to benefit farmers.

In her address in the Congress Parliamentary Party meet last week, Gandhi had declared that the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill will be brought in this current session. But she remained mum about the Land Acquisition amendment bill.

The tension between Trinamool Congress (TC) and the Congress over the land bill got reflected in a recent internal meeting of the Rural Development Ministry. The Minister of State and TC member Shishir Adhikary told his senior minister Joshi that the proposed bill is “worse than the act formulated by the British rulers in 1894” because in British act “small and marginal farmers” were separately mentioned but the 2009 amendments has no special provision for this section of the society.

Congress managers have now left the matter at Sonia Gandhi’s table: if she can convince Banerjee and get the Bill tabled on August 7 or hold back the bill, not ruffling the Railway Minister’s feathers.