Pushed to the wall on the issue of land, the Uttar Pradesh government has started plugging loopholes on which the courts have acted against it.

The Mayawati government on Thursday passed the Uttar Pradesh Urban Planning and Development Amendment Bill, 2011, in the state Assembly. The Bill, while preventing farmers from reclaiming their land once it is acquired, scraps an earlier provision that allowed them to seek restoration of their acquired land if it remained unused for more than five years.

Till now, under Sub-section 1 in Section 17 of the Act, an applicant was allowed restoration of his acquired land in case it had not been utilised for the purpose for which it was acquired for at least five years. This was done on repayment of charges incurred in connection with the acquisition, together with interest at the rate of 12% per annum and development charges, if any.

In fact, on Thursday itself, Liley Ram, a farmer from Gautambuddh Nagar district, whose 33 acres land at Chaura Salatpur village was acquired by invoking the urgency clause in 1976 and which now stands spread across Sectors 32 and 25-A of Noida, moved the Allahabad High Court challenging the acquisition proceedings as the plot had remained vacant for more than three decades before it was sold at exorbitant prices to private builders recently.

The amendment was passed on the last day of the Assembly’s monsoon session amid protests from the Opposition benches.

The Bill comes at a time when the government finds itself in the midst of controversies regarding land acquisition and growing instances of farmers wanting their land back.

This amended UP Urban Planning and Development Act contradicts the UPA government’s proposed Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill that would give farmers the right to reclaim the acquired land lying unused for five years.

Opposition parties have taken strong exception to the passage of the Bill and have appealed to governor B L Joshi not to give his assent to it.

?The Bill was passed without giving us a chance to debate on it and the way it was passed in a hurry goes to show the arbitrary manner in which the government of Uttar Pradesh functions,” said BJP UP chief Surya Pratap Shahi.