No consensus on Land Bill; next all party meet on Apr 18

An all-party meeting on the proposed Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill ended today inconclusively as parties wanted more time to discuss the provisions of the legislation. The meeting has been reconvened again on April 18 to possibly take a final political call on the legislation. CNBC-TV18’s Rituparna Bhuyan reports.

Along with the Food Security Bill, the Land Acquisition Bill is one of the key legislations that the UPA-2 would want to showcase to its prospective voters before going in for elections, but there are concerns both from UPA allies as well as opposition parties. Allies, for example, want the government to assure them that there would no impact on issues like Food Security.
They also want the assurances that only barren land will be acquired. The opposition is on the other extreme. For example, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants radical changes. It does not want any sale of land for example and has recommended that land should only be leased out. All these issues got discussed in today’s meeting.
Kamal Nath, Parliamentary Affairs Minister says: "Everybody agreed with the intentions of the government - that we must bring this bill as early as possible because the existing bill has defects."
Sushma Swaraj, Senior Leader, BJP Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha says: “We are against some of the provisions suggested by the government. We have suggested that all parties submit their suggestions to the government by April 15.”
The key takeaway for the government from today's meeting is that all political parties agreed that the current Land Acquisition Act is outdated and hence the new land bill should be brought in as soon as possible.
In fact even an opposition party like BJP is okay with the idea of introducing this bill in the second half of the Budget session of the parliament that begins from the April 22.
On April 18, the government will meet with political parties again for possibly the last time to take their final views and before that they have requested the political parties to send in their final recommendations by April 15.