Buddhadeb demands a new land acquisition bill

KOLKATA - West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Monday demanded that the central government replace the age-old Land Acquisition Act with a new legislation benefiting both agriculture and industry.

“We think a new land acquisition bill should be passed by parliament. We cannot move ahead with this old bill. This old bill should be completely changed,” said Bhattacharjee, who is also a politburo member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

The central government promised to bring the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill in parliament’s winter session after Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in August following the farmers’ agitation in Uttar Pradesh to demand higher compensation for land notified for acquisition for the Yamuna Expressway.

The Congress has demanded that Haryana’s legislation on land acquisition and rehabilitation, which has provisions for acquisition of land at market rates and an annuity for 33 years, should be sent to all states as a model law.

“As I have said we want a new land acquisition bill which should look into three main aspects — how the land will be taken, what will be the rehabilitation package and what will be the cost of the land,” Bhattacharjee said after inaugurating a new building of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBDIC) here.

“We want that the bill should be balanced so that both industrialisation and agriculture are benefited. We want that the poor and the displaced should also be benefited,” said Bhattacharjee.

Earlier, Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee expressed her reservations about the new land acquisition bill.

However, Rahul Gandhi said last week that the difference between his party and Mamata Banerjee over the bill is limited to only one point - how much land the government should acquire.

Banerjee’s opposition to the land acquisition bill is seemingly based on cold political calculations as it is her intense anti-land acquisition campaign in West Bengal that has turned the tide against the ruling Left Front and led to a series of electoral triumphs of the Trinamool Congress.

With the state slated to hold the assembly polls next year, Banerjee is loathe to concede any ground on the issue, which has been her main campaign plank over the last few years.

The Land Acquisition Amendment Bill, which seeks to amend the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, provides for mandatory social impact assessment for any acquisition resulting in large-scale displacement.