The CPI(M) on Monday termed the ‘Black Ordinance’ on land acquisition as utterly anti-poor and anti-farmer. The party’s three-day-long central committee meeting which began on Hyderabad said this Ordinance is “totally authoritarian”.
“The Central Committee of the CPI(M) condemns the Black Ordinance amending the land Act of 2013, brought by the Modi Government and calls for the widest mobilisations of the kisans and rural poor to force its reversal. The Modi Government has shown its contempt for Parliament and democratic norms by adopting the ordinance route in its eagerness to satiate the demands of corporates and FDI.
“The Ordinance is both authoritarian in its method and utterly anti-farmer and anti-rural poor in its substance,” said the resolution of the central committee meeting.
The left party accused the Modi Government of inserting several clauses surreptitiously to favour corporate interests. The ordinance did away with the differences between land acquisitions of the Government or public sector projects and private sector projects, said CPI(M). The party also pointed out that the earlier provisions of time limit for land acquirers to finish the project were also removed to favour the corporate interests to retain the land even without fulfilling the project.
“The Ordinance is thus totally against the interest of farmers. The CPI(M) had been critical of the earlier Act of 2013 for being inadequate in its protection of farmers and other project affected sections. But this Ordinance eliminates even the protections which were included in the Act after the struggle of farmers, their democratic organisations and the left parties,” the CPI(M) maintained.