Govt believes to have 'shaken' Oppn faith in 2013 land Act

NDA breathes easy as land Bill to be tabled after Bihar elections, GST headed for winter session

With barely three days to go before the end of the ongoing Monsoon session, the Narendra Modi government on Monday had some of its wishes answered -- the land Bill was postponed to be tabled in Parliament until after the Bihar state polls and the Congress was isolated in the Lok Sabha when Samajwadi Party broke ranks with it.

SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had supported the Congress after Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had suspended its 25 MPs, asked for a discussion on the issues and favoured the deadlock to be broken. The Congress, however, continued with its protests in both the Houses and ensured adjournments.

But the government also had to concede that the passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitutional amendment Bill will now have to wait until the winter session. One minister was still hopeful of the GST rollout by April 1, 2016. The minister suggested there still was small window available if the requisite more than half the state assemblies ratified the Bill within days of its passage in Parliament during the winter session. The minister said the possibility of a mid-review rollout, that is a rollout by October 1, 2016, needed to be studied.

In the afternoon, the parliamentary joint committee on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, decided to seek time until the winter session to finalise its report. The BJP rank and file had been complaining of the party losing sheen because of its 2015 land Bill and the opposition propaganda that it was "anti-farmer". It had feared reverses in the 'agrarian' Bihar in the assembly elections due in October.

There was, however, little clarity whether the land ordinance will be repromulgated. A senior minister said the government was yet to take a decision on the issue of repromulgating the ordinance, already promulgated thrice. Another minister said the ordinance will need to be repromulgated but the government might wait until the Bihar polls.

The Congress and Trinamool Congress MPs of the 30-member land Bill committee sought more time to study certain clauses. The meeting on Monday discussed section 24 (2) of the 2013 Act. The clause mandates land acquired for a project to be returned to the owner if it remains unutilised for five years. However, the NDA Bill amended this. Its Bill prescribed that in calculating five years any time spent in litigation not be counted.

The Congress on Monday said it was opposed to the changes to the 24 (2). But the government has claimed several of the states, like Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal want it to be modified.

Apart from the committee meetings, senior government ministers have also reached out to Opposition leaders to explain to them the lacunae in the 2013 Act. Over the past week, senior government ministers engaged with such Congress leaders as Jairam Ramesh, the author of the 2013 Act, as well as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar.

According to sources, both Pawar and Ramesh were explained the contradictions in the 2013 Act, particularly to do with the sections relatined to the contentious consent clause like 2(1), 2(2) and 109 of the 2013 Act. It was also pointed out that the social impact assessment, as mentioned in the 2013 law, is a long 52-month process that will make it impossible for any government to fulfill its infrastructure projects within its tenure.