Govt refers land Bill to joint committee

The 30-member panel, comprising both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members, will have to give its report on the first day of Monsoon session

A sustained attack by the Opposition and demand from allies forced the government on Tuesday to refer the contentious land Bill to a joint committee of Parliament.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi led much of the Opposition in attacking the government. National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies Shiv Sena and Shiromani Akali Dal, too, demanded that the Bill be referred to a committee.

The 30-member committee, comprising both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members, will have to give its report on the first day of the Monsoon session.

Lok Sabha members on the committee include Congress leaders K V Thomas and Rajiv Satav, Shiv Sena leader Anand Rao Adsul, Trinamool Congress member Kalyan Banerjee, Biju Janata Dal leader Bhartruhari Mahtab, Communist Party of India (Marxist) member Mohammad Salim, Lok Janashakti Party leader Chirag Paswan and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders S S Ahluwalia, Udit Raj, Anurag Thakur and Ganesh Singh.

The names of the 10 Rajya Sabha members will be announced later.

Rahul said the government intended to “grab” farmers’ lands for its industrialist friends and his party would continue to oppose the Bill on the streets even if it fails to stall it in Parliament.

He recalled how it had taken the preceding United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government — which was led by Congress — had taken two years to bring the Bill but how the NDA had killed it within days of coming to power by removing important clauses such as consent and social impact assessment and the provision that acquired land not used for five years would returned to the owners.

Rahul said only eight per cent of projects have been hampered because of non-availability of land where as 40 per cent land in special economic zones (SEZs) was lying unutilised.

Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rahul said senior leaders of the party, such as L K Advani, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj, had thumped their desks when the UPA had introduced the Bill in 2013 and it had been passed.

Justifying the need for amending the 2013 Act, Rural Development Minister Birender Singh said hardly any land was acquired by any state government under that law. Samajwadi Party’s Dharmendra Yadav said in Uttar Pradesh large tracts of land were acquired under the 2013 law.

The government had in December brought an ordinance to amend the 2013 land law. It brought a Bill in Parliament to replace the ordinance but it was not passed by Rajya Sabha in the first part of the Budget session. To facilitate re-promulgation of the ordinance, the government had prorogued Rajya Sabha, curtailing its Budget session.

In a related development, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh lashed out at Rahul’s charge that the Centre has extended the ban on fishing to facilitate entry of private big trawlers, at the expense of poor Indian fishermen.

“The Centre had called a meeting of all coastal states on March 18, 2015, which unanimously decided that the annual ban on fishing would be extended to 61 days as against the current 47 days. This would ensure that those states which had shorter ban period do no encroach on the marine resources of other states,” Radha Mohan Singh told reporters. The ban period was extended as per a recommendation made by a committee constituted during the UPA’s tenure.

He said there was no question of allowing foreign trawlers in Indian waters as the current NDA government had rejected a recommendation made during the UPA’s time. “Rahul Gandhi should know that it is mandatory that fishing be stopped for few months to enable breeding and growth of marine resources,” Singh said.