The Government is learnt to have restarted the process of drafting the contentious drafts to amend Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (CNT), 1908 and Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act (SPT), 1949.
Highly placed sources with the Government informed that the new Bills apart from dropping 21 (B) and 13 (A) of the CNT and SPT Acts, respectively would continue carrying 71 (2) of the CNT, meant to end the compensation provision.
“There is unanimity over continuing with the provisions that stops transfer of tribal land to any non-tribal by using the compensation provision. Though the provision was ended way back in 1969 but is continuing somehow. The new draft would also keep provision of the Scheduled Area Regulation (SAR) court to settle the disputes continuing,” said a top official of the Revenue and land Reforms Department.
Also, the amendments proposed into Section 71 (2) of the original amendment Bill, making provision for land acquisition for building ananwadis, health centers, schools etc in the scheduled areas, would also remain intact. “There was not much objections to this and the provision is likely to prevail,” he added.
Talks are also there that restriction of police station for a tribal buying tribal’s land may be dropped after once is nodded by the Tribal Advisory Council (TAC) meeting slated to take place in on August 3. “Fact is that the thana mentioned there is not the police thana but the revenue thana but it has been interpreted like this. TAC may discuss this,” said Ratan Tirkey, a member of the Council.
Following overwhelming opposition from all quarters the Government had after the TAC meeting held this Monday decided to backtrack from its stated position relating to altering with nature of tribal land. The amendments through the twin Bills passed by the Assembly were sent back by Governor Droupadi Murmu with host of objections forcing the Government to retract.
The official said that by accommodating the changes, fresh drafts under preparation presently, would be placed before the TAC and then carried to the Cabinet for approval. In all likelihood the piece of legislations would be tabled before the Assembly’s Monsoon Session which has been deferred seemingly for this very purpose to now commence on August 7.
Rattled on the other, feeling inside the ruling BJP is that the party should now work to resurrect the ground it lost during the entire episode.
Party legislators who were to face a kind of social boycott since the CNT-SPT amendment process has started, would like to cash in the course correction done and take credit for that. In any case the movement had become more social than political now and Opposition parties have been pushed on the background. We have to project the BJP and the Government as accommodative,” said a senior MlA who is also TAC member.