After Trinamul Congress nominee Mukul Roy sought more time to form a view, the Union Cabinet on Thursday deferred a decision on the contentious Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Bill, 2011. Even though Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh had claimed earlier to have the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on board over the legislative proposal, the Trinamul Congress appears to be sticking with its stand of not allowing any role for the government in acquisition of land.
Sources said that Mr Roy stated in the Cabinet meeting that his party would like to have more time to form a view on the legislative proposal. The LARR Bill, 2011 has since been renamed as “The Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement and Rehabilitation and Transparency in Land Acquisition (RCRRTLA) Bill, 2012.
Apart from the Trinamul Congress, even the commerce ministry is miffed at the clause to make the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act compliant with the resettlement and rehabilitation provisions of the RCRRTLA Bill, 2012. It has been learnt that even some of the Congress ministers, including surface transport minister C.P. Joshi, sought more time to go through the Cabinet note.
While the UPA government is keen to get the land bill passed by the Parliament at the earliest, the Trinamul Congress, sources said, wants the Centre to take positive decisions on its demands for financial package for West Bengal. The Cabinet proposal on the land bill seeks to do away with the retrospective clause of the earlier proposal for the implementations of the rehabilitation and resettlement clauses.
Further, the proposal has also diluted the earlier stand of the government on food security by now proposing that it would be the state governments, which would decide whether multi-cropped land should be acquired or not.
The Cabinet proposal has recommended compensation to be two times the market rates in the urban areas, while it could be two to four times in the rural areas depending on a scale, which would measure distance from the urban centre.
In another departure from the earlier proposal, the Cabinet note has done away with the ceiling of 100 acre and 50 acre in rural and urban areas respectively for rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) package, which would now be left at the discretion of the states.
Mr Jairam Ramesh, sources said, is hopeful that the Cabinet would take up the land bill again in the next meeting.