Letters: Better late than never

The Centre, it appears, would be asking the states to enact their own laws on land acquisition. It is surprising that it took six decades after Independence for the Centre to take a relook at a 100-year-old legislation. Having done so in 2007 we have continued to soft-pedal on this even as the Five-Year Plans promising big-bang industrialisation kept rolling in. Now that serious attention is being paid by the Centre, the lack of will in pursuing the rough road to a comprehensive legislation is unfortunate. The coming Bihar Assembly elections have managed to undo the toil of eight years. For an election-eve image upgrade, the Bharatiya Janata Party has offered what must be a national overview policy formulation to the states. If the bill is back in the earlier form, it would have all the drawbacks that prompted debates in the first place.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad

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