I/II. http://www.asianage.com/india/more-nda-raise-land-bill-objections-058
More in NDA raise Land Bill objections Feb 26, 2015 | Age Correspondent | New Delhi Email this page Printer-friendly version Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha during the Budget Session in New Delhi on Wednesday. -- PTI Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha during the Budget Session in New Delhi on Wednesday. -- PTI Though the government has been indicating it is open to changes in the proposed Land Bill, trouble for it mounted further on Wednesday with yet another NDA ally, the Lok Janshakti Party led by Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, joining the group of those opposed to the law. ***As part of its renewed strategy, the government decided to field surface transport minister Nitin Gadkari to defend the proposed law. Sources said this move was taken after rural development minister Chaudhary Birendra Singh told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that his Lok Sabha constituency had a majority of farmers, and it would not be feasible for him to put the government's stand before the media at a time when farmers' bodies are protesting against the bill. The move to field Mr Gadkari was after a Cabinet meeting on the land acquisition bill issue that was presided over by Mr Modi in the morning.*** [Emphasis added.] A relentless Congress, which is opposing the bill in both Houses of Parliament, hit the streets on Wednesday and accused the government of being "anti-farmer" and "pro-corporates". Party leaders who staged a sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar vowed to take the battle across the nation, but Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi were conspicuous by their absence. Top Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh, Jairam Ramesh and Ahmed Patel present at the "Zameen Wapsi Andolan" dubbed as a "black ordinance" the emergency measure that made major changes in the UPA's 2013 land law pushed by Mr Rahul Gandhi. The chorus against the land acquisition law within the NDA grew louder Wednesday with Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP voicing concern over some provisions and seeking more clarity from the government. LJP MP Chirag Paswan said his party was worried over provisions like doing away with consent of farmers for acquiring their land in the amended law. "We have objections over some measures. There are questions about the need of doing away with farmers' consent. They also will have no right to move the courts," said Mr Paswan. Mr Gadkari, now the government's key negotiator, has accused the Opposition parties of "double standards" and said almost every state government that was run by them, including the Congress, had written to the Centre against the previous land law brought in by the UPA. "We are open to accepting good suggestions offered by other parties. If people have some opinion on the social impact assessment or consent clauses, we are willing to hear them," he told reporters. Asked about opposition by even the BJP's allies, Mr Gadkari said it was a battle between ground realities and perceptions, adding that a perception against the government had been created even though the facts supported them. Attacking the Congress for its "double-faced" politics, he quoted former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan's letter to the then UPA government against the law, in which he claimed it would "adversely" affect public works, and make them "unviable". Insisting that the new law was pro-farmer and pro-poor, Mr Gadkari said two Central ministries, highways and coal, alone had awarded compensation of Rs 2,000 crores to landowners at the higher rate after the ordinance was promulgated. "Irrigation projects are behind 80 per cent of the land acquisition. Should such development works be hostage to the consent of 70 per cent landowners," Mr Gadkari asked, adding that poor irrigation facilities across the country would further stress farmers under distress due to low productivity. Social activist Anna Hazare said, meanwhile, that the BJP government had "misled people" on several fronts, including the black money issue and decentralisation of power, while asking for votes in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. The Gandhian activist, who is agitating against the Land Bill, threatened to go ahead with a nationwide "jail bharo andolan" if the government does not pay heed to the demands. II. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150226/jsp/nation/story_5599.jsp Gadkari opens Modi's land defence Our Special Correspondent New Delhi, Feb. 25: Nitin Gadkari, the road transport and highways minister, has been fielded by Narendra Modi to defend the amended land acquisition bill. Before Parliament sat this morning, the Prime Minister met his "core" ministerial group, which includes Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj apart from Gadkari, and deliberated on the "negative" perceptions emanating from the campaign against the bill inside Parliament and on the streets. Modi asked Gadkari to address a news conference today, picking him because he had been rural development minister briefly and was familiar with the land acquisition law. In June last year, a month after the Modi government took charge, Gadkari had convened a meeting of chief ministers and state revenue ministers to get a status report on the UPA-enacted land law. But sources said Gadkari was chosen for another reason. "He is on the same page as the Prime Minister and (finance minister) Jaitley on the amendments to the land law," a source said. #Although Rajnath was tasked with negotiating with the RSS farmers' wing and other peasant groups, sources said the home minister's "pro-reforms" credentials were not "100 per cent established". "Therefore, he was perhaps not thought of as the best candidate to open the government's innings. Rajnathji likes to think of himself as a kisan neta (farmers' leader) before anything else," a source said. ***Rural development minister Chaudhary Birender Singh should have been the "logical" choice but the BJP leadership believes that, like Rajnath, his "heart too is not fully with" the amended law.*** [Emphasis added.] At his news conference, Gadkari projected himself as a farmer leader. "Narendrabhai, (former Karnataka chief minister) Yeddyurappa and I were always identified as pro-farmer leaders in our party," claimed the minister whose own website describes him as a "successful entrepreneur who used urban resources for creating employment opportunities in rural areas". Born and raised in Nagpur, Gadkari had started his political career as a student activist of the Sangh's Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Gadkari claimed that the Congress chief ministers who spoke at the June 2014 conference had taken a stand different from their party's. Then Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had written that he was "unhappy" with the six-fold rise in relief and rehabilitation costs that the UPA-enacted land law would foist on states, the BJP minister claimed. Gadkari also said Haryana's new chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP, had increased the compensation package for farmers four-fold over what his predecessor, Bhupinder Singh Hooda of the Congress, had paid for land acquisitions.# Claiming that Modi had told him this morning there was "no question of meting out injustice" to farmers, Gadkari based his defence on a note Jaitley had prepared in January after the Centre promulgated the land ordinance. Jaitley's principal contention was that by exempting some sectors from social impact assessment and prior consent of landowners, rural India would "benefit". "Almost all the exempted purposes would enhance the value of land, create employment and provide rural areas with better (physical) infrastructure and social infrastructure," Jaitley's note said. The operative lines were: "Development and justice to the landowner must coexist. One cannot be done at the cost of the other." On its Twitter page, the BJP decoded the jargon. It claimed land-owners would get four times the market price of their plots, besides facilities like colleges, hospitals, roads and railways so that an ailing farmer does not have to travel to a faraway hospital or his son journey "200km" a day to and from college. BJP sources said no all-party meeting was planned but ministers would speak to leaders of other parties. Today, Jaitley reached out to ally Akali Dal. Sources said a senior leader would get in touch with another unhappy ally, the Shiv Sena. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
