No finality on land bill yet
Centre says a final decision will be taken after panel submits its report to Parliament
NEW DELHI: In a signal that the last word on the controversial land acquisition bill may not have been heard yet, the Centre on Monday made it clear that a final decision on amendments to the bill would be taken only after a joint parliamentary panel studying the legislation submits its report to Parliament.
The clarification came after Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia asked why the panel set up in May was given an extension when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared it would be left to the states to amend the law.
“The PM had said the government will not take any action and now they want to extend the time,” said Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha. Scindia and Kharge’s protests came after Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan announced she had given the panel time till the last day of the winter session to submit its report.
The government, however, insisted it had given no commitment on the fate of the bill.
“There is no confusion.... No final view has been taken on the bill,” parliamentary affairs minister M Venkaiah Naidu said. He added that Modi echoed the views of some chief ministers at a Niti Aayog meeting. They had suggested that if the Centre faced any problem in making changes to the bill, then it should be left to the states.
Naidu added the final decision would be taken after the opinion of the panel was known. The final decision will be taken by first the Cabinet and then the Parliament.
Government sources later added that since the bill was a property of parliament, only the House could take the decision. The Lok Sabha had passed an earlier version of the bill in March that ran into trouble in the Rajya Sabha where the government is in a minority. In May, the government introduced a diluted version of this — which proposed nine amendments to the land acquisition law enacted during the UPA government’s tenure in 2013 — in the Lok Sabha.