Land Bill: Govt capitulates on social impact, consent clauses

The government is set to relent on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015. On Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members of a parliamentary joint committee on the Bill suggested amendments that effectively bring back the social impactassessment and consent clauses, hallmarks of the United Progressive Alliance government's 2013 Act Stock Market Tips

Arguing that these clauses made the 2013 Act cumbersome, the government had excluded these from its land Bill ordinance, promulgated at the end of December 2014 and re-promulgated thrice after that. It had also brought a Bill to this effect in Parliament.

At a meeting of the 30-member joint select committee on Monday, all 11 ruling party MPs suggested changes to six of the nine amendments proposed by the government to the 2013 Act. The BJP, along with its allies, has 14 members in the committee, while Opposition parties have 16.

The committee's deliberations have seen BJP allies such as the Shiv Sena oppose the government's amendments to the 2013 Act.

Now, the joint committee members will vote on each clause of the Bill. The move by the panel's BJP members has paved the way for a more consensual report than expected earlier. The committee has sought two more days and will now submit a report on Friday Commodity Trading Tips

The development will also facilitate states to come up with a more reformist land Bill, as discussed at a NITI Aayog meeting earlier this month.

The BJP's changed strategy on the Bill, a tactical move in view of the coming Bihar Assembly polls, will assuage not just the discontent within the party over the issue but also Sangh Parivar outfits, which have been opposed to deletion of the consent and social impact assessment clauses. Many in the party were wary of the Opposition's charge that the 2015 Bill was anti-farmer Stock Market Tips