The stalemate between the ruling party and the Opposition over the controversial land Bill continued as the Centre on Friday decided to re-promulgate the land Ordinance and the Congress rejected the Government’s offer for a dialogue on the Bill.
To facilitate the re-promulgation of the Ordinance, which lapses on April 5, the Centre decided to prorogue the Rajya Sabha. “The Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) has decided to recommend prorogation of the Rajya Sabha with immediate effect,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after the CCPA meeting on Friday.
Asked when the Government will bring the Ordinance on land acquisition again as the existing Ordinance, Venkaiah Naidu said, “You will come to know when the decision is taken.”
The CCPA meeting, chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, was attended by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and MoS Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, besides Naidu.
The Government took this decision on a day Congress president Sonia Gandhi rejected the Centre’s offer of dialogue on the controversial land Bill.
In a strongly worded letter to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Sonia alleged it was a mockery of the consensus building tradition by a “myopic” Modi Government which was “bending backwards” to favour industrialists and demanded that UPA’s legislation be brought back in totality.
The Government dismissed Sonia’s attack over the controversial land Acquisition Bill as “political grandstanding” and said it was “strange” that she is defending an Act over which many Chief Ministers of her own party had raised concerns.
“I think it is only a political grandstanding rather than anything else,” Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters here while replying to a question on Congress president’s comment on the land Bill.
“It is very interesting and strange that when several of Congress’ own Chief Ministers have raised lot of concerns about that law which the Congress president is referring to... Now post that, even the Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley) during a discussion on the land Bill had quoted from the letter of the then Commerce Minister (Anand Sharma) saying that it might not encourage investments into this country,” Sitharaman said.
Sources said Janata Dal(U) president Sharad Yadav is also going to write back to Gadkari rejecting the land Bill and asking the Government to withdraw it.
For issuing an Ordinance when the Parliament is in session, at least one of the Houses has to be prorogued. The new Ordinance may carry the nine official amendments moved by the Government during passage of the Bill in the lok Sabha, which seeks to replace the executive order. A meeting of the Union Cabinet on Wednesday had given “post facto approval” to those amendments.
Sources said that senior Ministers assigned responsibility to consult leaders of the various political parties have reached out to key leaders and the Government will try its best to bring the land Bill in the Rajya Sabha to replace the Ordinance in the second half of the Budget Session after it reconvenes on April 20.
Hailing farmers as the “backbone” of the country, Sonia said the Congress cannot support any law which hurts farmers, and asked the Modi dispensation to bring back UPA’s land Bill in totality. She said it was regrettable that anyone championing the cause of distressed farmers and needy farm labourers was being branded as “anti-national” by a “myopic Modi Government bending backwards to favour select industrialists”. She asked the Government to “rise above its narrow-minded politics”.
“Proposition of a post-facto debate after unilateral imposition of anti-farmer law is mockery of building partisan consensus,” Sonia said. She said the fundamental difference between the Congress and the BJP is in understanding farmers’ distress and loss of livelihood by acquisition of land without safeguards. Being pro-farmer does not mean anti-growth, she said.
Gadkari had written to Sonia, leaders of other Opposition parties and social activists, including Anna Hazare, inviting them to an open debate on the issue while asserting that the Bill was “very much in farmers’ interest”.
Holding that the amendments brought forward by the NDA Government negate the 2013 law in letter and spirit, she asked the Government to rise above the realm of narrow partisan politics and bring back the 2013 law in totality, consistent with the sentiments and aspirations of the farmers. She said that the 2013 law was formulated on the premise of an extensive debate and consensus.
Seeking to rebut points raised by Gadkari in his letter, Sonia said she was amazed at its unabashed display of “half-truths and misrepresentations.”
There is a buzz in Government circle that the ruling dispensation may accept some tweaking of the consent clause, which was done away with in the Ordinance that was promulgated in December last year. It may agree to reintroduce the provision of taking farmers’ consent for acquiring land. The earlier 80 per cent consent requirement can be reduced to 51 per cent.
Similarly, instead of the earlier social impact assessment (SIA), the Government may involve expert groups to examine the land deals to find out whether excess land has been acquired for a project and whether it has affected the original inhabitants.