Gujarat Governor accords assent to six Bills

Gujarat Governor O P Kohli today gave his assent to six out of the eleven Bills of the BJP-led state government passed in the recently-concluded budget session of the Legislative Assembly.
These six Bills are: Gujarat Land Revenue (Amendment) Bill, Gujarat Electricity Duty (Amendment) Bill, Gujarat Stamp (Amendment) Bill, Gujarat Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill, Gujarat Tax on Entry of Specified Goods into Local Areas (Amendment) Bill and the Registration (Gujarat Amendment) Bill of 2016.
"These six bills were introduced in the first week of the Assembly session. Today, we were informed that the Governor has signed these bills. They will become Acts after respective departments issue notifications in this regard," C J Gothi, secretary to state Legislative Affairs Department said.

According to him, the remaining five Bills, which were passed in the last two days of the session, are still lying in the office of the Assembly Speaker and not sent to the Governor yet.
These Bills include the Gujarat Special Investment Region (Amendment) Bill, The Right to fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement(Gujarat Amendment) Bill, The Ganpat University (Amendment) Bill, Gujarat Private Universities (Amendment) Bill and Gujarat State Higher Education Council Bill.
All these five Bills were passed in the absence of Congress MLAs on March 30 and 31, as all of them were suspended for two days by the Speaker for staging protests inside the House.

The Bill proposing to amend the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 stirred a controversy, as it proposes to do away with requirement of Social Impact Assessment clause and consent of 80 per cent land owners for acquiring land for certain social sector projects as well as for industrial corridor.

Gujarat Congress MLAs recently met the Governor and requested him not to give his assent to this Bill, claiming that it is against the interest of farmers and land owners.
Congress also said that they would meet the President, as his assent is also required for the Bill to become an Act in Gujarat.

The budget session of Gujarat Assembly started on February 22 and ended on March 31.