Land Bill ordinance will eliminate poverty across nation: Goyal

Rejecting the Congress Party's observation that the NDA Government was trying to grab the land of the poor by re-promulgating the Land Acquisition Bill Ordinance, Union Power

Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday said that the Centre was only seeking to ensure both prosperity and development in the rural areas, which the Congress regimes of the past 44 years had failed to do.

"Unfortunately he (Rahul Gandhi) runs a party which only believes in promising to remove poverty, but after 1971, we are now in 2015, and in these 44 years, what his (Rahul Gandhi's) government, his father, his great grandfather and his grandmother-led governments did not do in the last so many years, this government is doing by bringing prosperity and development to the rural areas, to the people of India," Goyal told media here.

"After the slogan of his grandmother to eliminate poverty, this country is still suffering, with people struggling to decide whether they are below the poverty line or above the poverty line. This government stands committed to rural electrification, to infrastructure, to reaching out to the people in rural areas. This government has committed that by 2022, every individual in this country will have a home of his own: a good home with a toilet, with power, with water, with a road reaching upto his home, and I think, all our efforts are towards that. We want to completely eliminate poverty in this country," he added.

Earlier in the day, the Congress Party had lashed out at the NDA Government for trying to grab the land of farmers by re-promulgating the controversial Land Acquisition Bill Ordinance for the third time.

The Union Cabinet today approved re-promulgation of Land Acquisition Ordinance. Union Communication and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told media here that a decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. The need for a new ordinance was felt, as the previous ordinance is due to expire on June 3.

The Land Bill is currently with the Joint Committee of Parliament for a detailed discussion on its provisions. The committee had its first meeting on Friday.