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The Union cabinet decided on Saturday to re-promulgate the controversial Land Acquisition Ordinance for the third time, saying it was necessary for maintaining continuity and providing a framework to compensate people whose land was acquired for certain categories of development projects. The move comes even as a Parliamentary Joint Committee is discussing the amendments that have been suggested in the Land Acquisition Bill, irking the principle opposition party.
“It is an affront to Parliament that had refused to put its stamp of approval on the law. The duplicity of Prime Minister Modi stands exposed. He had only yesterday said that his government was open to reviewing the anti-farmer land ordinance,” Congress Communication In-charge Randeep Surjewala said. He added that the party strongly condemned the sinister design of the Union government to surreptitiously push through the land ordinance after having agreed to get it re-examined through a Joint Committee of Parliament.
Once approved by President Pranab Mukherjee, the ordinance will be promulgated for the third time and will be the 13th executive order of the Narendra Modi government since it came to power in May last year.
After the cabinet meeting, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad explained to reporters, “The Cabinet has again approved the land acquisition ordinance to maintain continuity. The Bill is before the Joint Committee (of Parliament) and the old ordinance will lapse on June 3.”
Prasad said the re-promulgation was necessary as the amendments to the 2013 Act include 13 central Acts for ensuring compensation to farmers whose land is acquired for certain types of projects. “To ensure that there is no problem in payment of compensation to farmers, we have approved the recommendation for re-promulgation... it shows our commitment to the farmers,” he said.
If the ordinance had not been re-promulgated, then, legally-speaking, there would be no framework for the states to compensate the farmers, he said, while saying the move was required “just to obviate the apprehension of any ambiguity or uncertainty.”
A Bill based on the earlier ordinance is pending before a parliamentary panel and Prasad clarified that the fresh ordinance would be a copy of that with no new amendments. The ordinance was promulgated for the first time in December last year to amend the Right to Fair compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. It was replaced by a Bill that was passed in the Lok Sabha with 10 amendments, but not tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The Ordinance was re-promulgated in March this year for three months.
In order to re-promulgate the Ordinance, government had prorogued Rajya Sabha during the Budget session.
The NDA government has, since December, twice promulgated the land ordinance after it faced continuous resistance, especially in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition is in a minority. Once cleared, this will be the second ordinance to have been brought out three times in the recent past. The SEBI amendment ordinance had been issued thrice under the previous UPA government.
The first meeting of the joint Committee of Parliament on the Bill on Friday saw a number of Opposition members questioning the rationale of the government behind changing the provisions of the 2013 law. While the earlier law required the consent of 80 per cent of land owners for surrender of land for private projects and of 70 per cent for public-private partnership projects, the current bill exempts five categories from this provision: projects related to defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors and infrastructure, including public-private partnerships in which the government owned the land.
Responding to a question on whether the government could consider bringing the consent clause again, Prasad merely said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already declared he was open to any constructive suggestions on the Bill. Prasad also recalled that Modi, in his 'Mann Ki Baat' radio programme earlier, had made it clear that land would not be acquired for any corporates without the consent of farmers.
The telecom minister also said the government has made it clear that barren land would first be acquired and cultivable land acquired only if required. The 2013 Act also required that a social impact assessment be conducted to identify affected families and calculate the social impact of land acquisition. That provision has been done away with.
