Land Acquisition Bill referred to GoM

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The controversial Land Acquisition Bill was on Tuesday referred to a Group of Ministers (GoM) after some ministers raised reservations on certain provisions of the proposed legislation and said their suggestions were not heard adequately.

"Lot of ministries have given their suggestions. They were not adequately heard and hence the matter has been referred to GoM," a government source said.

A GoM will be set up shortly to examine the proposal.

The amended Bill has been rechristened as 'The Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement, Rehabilitation and Transparency in Land Acquisition'.

The Bill was listed for consideration earlier but it was deferred as some ministers sought more time to go through it.

The government had said in Parliament that provisions have been made in the revised Land Acquisition Bill incorporating recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee to protect the rights of farmers on land and to check the number of families displaced by land acquisition.

Seeking to dispel the impression that the Bill will only be pro-farmer, Rural Development Ministry had said current economic circumstances dictate the need for making it 'more investor-friendly'.

According to the government, the Bill 'endeavours to protect multi-cropped irrigated lands from land acquisition, so as not to adversely affect food safety of the country'.

The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 was introduced in Parliament in September last year and was referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee, which submitted its recommendation in May.