A united forum of 28 social organisations spearheading a campaign demanding a CBI enquiry into land and house allotment scam has urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to put the Odisha land Grabbing Prohibition Bill, 2014 in public domain for open discussion.
Notably, the Bill is designed for preventing grabbing of public land and taking legal action against the people concerned. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has enacted such a law several years back.
Welcoming the State Government’s move to make it a law, the forum in a letter to the Chief Minister suggested him to release the draft Bill in public domain and invite comments of people within a time limit.
“We are disappointed after knowing that the State Government is going to make this law in a hot haste manner without going through any public consultation,” said forum member Pradip Pradhan.
Pradhan said that earlier the State Government has passed toothless anti-corruption legislations like the Odisha lokayukta Bill 2014 bypassing any public consultation. “We apprehend a repeat of the cunning intention of the Government to bring about the proposed anti-land grabbing legislation while keeping the people in dark about the contents of the draft law,” he added.
Needless to mention that a wide-scale public debate over the draft Bill would make the law more people-friendly and foolproof, which is the goal of any worthy legislative exercise in a democracy, claimed forum members.
The forum members said that passing the Bill is not a big thing for the BJD Government as it has a huge majority in the Assembly, but passing it without discussing and consulting in the public domain would be undemocratic.