The long-pending Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 28th August after Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh assured the House that the measure allowed enough room for State governments to implement it as per their requirements.
The Bill is only setting a bottom line for fair compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement in the case of land acquisition and State governments were free to further improve upon it, the Minister said during a nearly five-hour long discussion on the Bill. Given the reservations expressed by some States over the earlier proposal to ban acquisition of multi-crop irrigated land, he said flexibility was factored into the legislation. The Bill will now be taken up in the Rajya Sabha.
Voting on the Bill went on for nearly three-hours. There was a last-minute hiccup when the Trinamool Congress demanded that the clause mandating private projects to take the consent of 80 per cent of landowners be changed to 100 per cent, as is prevalent in West Bengal. The State, Mr. Ramesh said, could change this provision, but added that it could not be changed in the Bill, which was adopted with 216 of the 239 members present voting for it.
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