The Congress-led government on Tuesday appeared close to mustering support for the proposed federal laws on land acquisition, with the principal opposition party BJP coming to its help. But the obduracy of key ally Trinamool Congress continues to pose a hurdle for the landmark legislation.
If enacted, the two bills in Parliament would help streamline the process of farmland acquisition for industry. Land acquisition delays have stalled a large number of infrastructure projects, especially in the road sector, and many big-ticket industrial projects.
The political move follows the killing of farmers in Uttar Pradesh?s Aligarh district in police firing, the latest in the string of violence against land acquisition efforts. The farmers were protesting against what they called inadequate compensation for the land acquired to build the $2 billion six-lane expressway between Agra and New Delhi.
As finance minister Pranab Mukherjee assured the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that all efforts would be made to clear the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and the concomitant Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2008 in the face of opposition demands, there were, however, uneasy faces in treasury benches. While political compulsions may have changed for others and the clearing of Bills acquired urgency, the Trinamool Congress? position remains the same.
The BJP ? which along with the CPI(M) had blocked the Bills during the first UPA administration ? has found that political compulsions in Uttar Pradesh have forced it to change its mind on the matter. After leading a standing committee on rural development which considered the Bill and criticised it for ?curtailing the rights of the state governments?, the party on Tuesday demanded that the Bills be brought before Parliament. Other parties too demanded that the Bills be cleared, since for the last few months, land acquisition issues have become more and more germane to the development debate. The examples of Posco, ArcelorMittal,Vedanta and now the Yamuna expressway have accorded political urgency to the matter.
That is where the government?s dilemma lies. Mamata Banerjee?s core objection is to a major provision in the Bill that industrial houses acquire 70% of the land required for an industrial project on their own, with the state governments pitching in with the residual 30%, that too for contiguity.
During a Cabinet meeting in July last year, Banerjee had blocked both Bills saying that nothing prevented industrial houses from using strong-arm tactics to acquire land from farmers. This morning, her party spokesperson and MP Sudeep Bandyopadhyaya repeated much the same in Parliament.
The Bills in their current form have gone through a group of ministers headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, a parliamentary standing committee and two Cabinet meetings. Only politics had blocked the Bill earlier, and the Congress hopes at least that a tide of events will allow the passage of the Bill, which has suddenly acquired political urgency to its plans for a political revival in India?s most populous state.