Cong CMs to discuss land Bill amendments

The land Bill parliamentary joint committee proceedings, to be held twice a week from Monday onwards, are set to be interesting with the Opposition, particularly the Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) members, unlikely to deliver on their earlier threat of boycotting the panel to protest the government having re-promulgated the land ordinance.

The Congress chief ministers will hold a meeting on Tuesday to reach a consensus about their respective state governments' views on the proposed amendments to the 2013 Land Act. At the first meeting of the joint committee on May 29, the opposition members had insisted that the committee should seek views of state governments on the proposed amendments just as the Centre had sought their views on lacunae, if any, in the 2013 Act.

That was in June 2014, and there was some dissonance among the Congress state governments on the efficacy of the 2013 Land Act. Some Congress governments, like the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in Maharashtra, had pointed out the problems that it thought hampered expeditious land acquisition. This had strengthened the Centre's argument that the 2013 Act needed to be amended, and it brought an ordinance in end-December, and later a Bill which the Lok Sabha passed but was never tabled in the Rajya Sabha because the ruling National Democractic Alliance is in a minority in that Upper House.

The Opposition members, like Biju Janata Dal's Bhartruhari Mahtab, have demanded that the government make public the acquisitions made for various projects ever since the land ordinance was promulgated for the first time in end-December. Congress MP Jairam Ramesh has asked for details of security related projects for which land has been acquired, as the Modi government had pleaded that the changes to the 2013 Act were essential to facilitate acquiring of land for projects related to India's security needs.