BJP today refuted the charge that the Land Acquisition Bill brought by the Narendra Modi government was "anti-farmer" and claimed that "long-term interests" of the agriculturists had been kept in mind while preparing the draft.
The party also defended the decision to go for the ordinance route pointing out that notification of the proposed Act by a certain date was a "Constitutional obligation".
"Opposition parties like Congress, Trinamool, Samajwadi Party and BSP have been carrying out a relentless campaign to create an impression that the ordinance is anti-farmer. We want to make it clear that contrary to their claims, the provisions in the ordinance will provide huge long-term benefits to the farmers of the country," BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh told reporters here.
He said one of the points on which the ordinance has been called anti-farmer was doing away with the clause which entitled the farmers to get their land back in the event of the project for which it was acquired not getting completed within five years.
"This was necessary as washing hands off projects by returning the land to farmers was earning us a world-wide dubious reputation of India becoming a country of unfinished projects", Singh said.
Citing an example of unfinished production unit of Nano car project of Tata Motors, he said, the biggest example of ill-effects of projects remaining unfinished is the site at Singur (in West Bengal) where Tatas wanted to set up a production unit for Nano cars.
"The farmers whose land was acquired are today left with no cultivable tracts nor do they have access to employment opportunities which might have come their way had the project seen the light of the day," Singh, who is BJP's in-charge for West Bengal, said.
