The contentious land acquisition bill is set to generate heat in the Winter Session of Parliament with Congress today demanding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement in the first week on government's plans on the issue.
Party leader Jairam Ramesh made the demand after a meeting of the Joint Committee on the issue refused to take the cognisance of Prime Minister's statement in his 'Mann ki baat' programme that the government will not re-promulgate the land ordinance which expired on August 31.
Ramesh, who is a member of the committee, told reporters that it would be a "major issue" if the Prime Minister tells Parliament that the government stand was different from the one he spelt out in Mann ki baat.
Such a statement would mean that the Mann ki baat remarks that the government would not repromulgate the ordinance was made in view of Bihar polls, he said.
He said that the Congress felt that the Committee had become "irrelevant" in view of Modi's statement. In the meeting of the committee, Congress member Rajeev Satav gave a copy of Modi's 'Mann ki baat' statement to the panel's Chairman S S Ahluwalia.
Opposition members were told that Parliament is supreme and that the committee has not heard anything from the Lok Sabha Speaker.
In fact, the hour-long meeting of the committee saw an aggressive Trinamool Congress demanded calling the Prime Minister as a witness, an idea opposed by the ruling BJP and ally Shiv Sena.
It was contended that the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh had appeared before the Joint Parliamentary Committee that went into the securities scam in the early nineties.
Besides, the Chair was told that when Singh was Prime Minister in the UPA-II, he had expressed readiness to appear before the JPC which went into the 2G scam.
Ramesh said that either the Prime Minister or any senior minister should make a statement on the land acquisition bill issue at the earliest when Parliament meets on November 26.
In his Mann ki baat address, Modi had declared readiness to accept any suggestions to benefit the farmers in the pending bill on it.
