The West Bengal government is looking into the possibility of drafting a fresh Singur Bill to avoid going to the Supreme Court. The Calcutta High Court had struck down the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act 2011 last week, calling it unconstitutional. The Mamata government had got the Singur Act passed last June so it could reclaim 997 acres leased to Tata Motors at Singur, following which the Tatas challenged the validity of the Act.
Over the weekend, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a series of meetings with party leaders, lawyers and others to find a way out even as there is a clamour within a section of the Trinamool Congress against challenging the Calcutta High Court order at the Supreme Court. The chief minister has reportedly asked the land revenue department to draft a new Bill.
Trinamool Congress (TC) sources pointed to a growing view that the government won?t win at the highest court either. A protracted legal battle will also delay matters. While Banerjee is said to be thinking of launching a fresh political battle over the issue in the form of a farmers? movement, TC insiders say there are practical problems since TC is the ruling party in both the state and the Union governments.
?It will be practical to use powers vested with the government and introduce a new Bill in the assembly to resolve the Singur issue,? a minister in the state cabinet said on condition of anonymity.
The minister said there have been discussions around sections 3, 4, and 5 of the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011 which the Calcutta High Court division bench cited as reasons to nullify the Act. “We are looking at the possibility of rectifying these three sections and tabling a new bill,” the minister said.
In their judgment, justices Pinaki Chandra Ghosh and Mrinal Kanti Chakraborty observed that the Singur Act should have taken the President’s assent; categorising farmers into willing and unwilling groups didn’t conform to public interest and that compensation for Tatas was not made clear.
The state law ministry is not too happy with the move, saying that a new Act could bring a fresh set of problems. Sources in the law department said the government was not consulting much with advocate general Anindya Mitra, since he had been opposed to the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill 2011 in the first place. Mitra is also against the idea of a fresh bill.
The government is trying to avoid the Supreme Court route, since the SC had put a stay on enforcing the Singur Act last year when a one-man bench of the Calcutta High Court had upheld it and the Tatas had moved the Supreme Court to stop the Mamata government from giving back land to farmers.
According to Arunava Ghosh, a constitutional expert following the Singur case closely, there are provisions in the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, which bars an acquired land from being re-acquired. The government, according to the law, can acquire land for public purpose and if it twice fails in utilising the land for public purpose, then it would have to put it to auction. The government?s move to introduce a fresh bill doesn?t conform with the mother Act. So it will become unconstitutional once again, Ghosh said.