After tabling the Land Bill in the Parliament, minister of rural development Jairam Ramesh said that the legislative proposal is a “political response to a political issue” and gave full credit to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi for the bill.
Briefing reporters after tabling the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, Mr Ramesh said that it was due to active involvement of Mr Gandhi that the bill could be drafted and tabled in a flat 55 days. The minister also said that he would hope that the Congress would do well in the next year’s UP Assembly elections after the introduction of the Land Bill, which in all likelihood would be passed by Parliament by December this year.
Mr Ramesh said that it was Mr Gandhi’s padyatra in the western UP which made him to incorporate the clause to make the law effective with retrospective effect so that it could cover the land acquisition in Bhatta-Parsaul villages in Greater Noida area.
The minister also distributed a comparative chart of the LARR Bill, 2011 with the land policy of the UP government to stress the fact that the initiative was far ahead of what was being done by the state government to deal with the farmers’ agitation. Listing Mr Gandhi’s contribution to the bill, Mr Ramesh said that measures for livelihoods losers, steps to take tribals’ rights and specific definition of the public purpose for acquisition of land were direct contribution of the Congress leader.
Meanwhile, the minister of state V. Narayansawmi on Wednesday introduced the Nuclear Energy Safety Regulatory Authority Bill, 2011 also in the Parliament.