Rahul dares Modi, says won’t let an inch of land to be acquired
FARM FRONT Cong will defeat land bill in Parliament, says party vice-president
JAIPUR: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday to get a contentious land bill passed in Parliament, saying his party won’t let an inch of land be acquired under the allegedly anti-farmer legislation.
The Amethi MP attacked the government over a spate of recent corruption charges, underscoring his growing assertiveness after returning from a nearly two-monthlong sabbatical that seems to have invigorated the beleaguered party.
He has since attacked Modi on a range of issues from expensive sartorial choices to allegedly antifarmer policies, repeatedly painting him as a pro-industrialist leader.
‘‘Dum nahi hai (they don’t have the strength),’’ Gandhi said in Jaipur. ‘‘They brought the land ordinance three times. We won’t let it pass in Parliament. We’ll not let even one inch of land be acquired. The 56-inch chest will be reduced to 5.6 inches and this will be done by the Congress party, farmers and the people of India.’’
The Congress has led the Opposition charge against the bill, accusing the government of compromising farmer interests by doing away with a crucial consent clause for land acquisition.
The party has successfully stalled the legislation on the back of its superior numbers in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition doesn’t have a majority, compelling the Centre to change tack this week and say states could enact their own land laws to spur economic reform.
The 44-year-old’s comments come days before the monsoon session of Parliament begins on July 21, when the government hopes to pass a raft of reform legislation, including the land bill. But consensus has eluded a joint select committee of Parliament that is considering the legislation, putting a question mark on its passage.
The bill is key to Modi’s plans to relax ease of doing business in India and frame industry-friendly policies but has run into rough weather as several non-Congress chief ministers, including West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu’s J Jayalalithaa stridently opposing it.
The 44-year-old Congress V-P also tore into the government over the multi-crore Vyapam scam and a controversy involving ex-IPL boss Lalit Modi, saying Rajasthan had a “Lalit Modi sarkar”, Madhya Pradesh a “Vyapam sarkar” and Maharashtra a “Munde sarkar”— a reference to charges against state minister Pankaja Munde—but the PM was still silent. Gandhi said on the last day of a two-day visit to the state that Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje-led government was remote controlled by the ex-cricket administrator, days after Raje landed in a row over allegedly helping Modi get UK papers.