The Centre has gone to the maximum extent to accommodate the concerns of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the Draft Land Acquisition Bill, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh told The Hindu here on Saturday. Mr. Ramesh said the Bill would now be placed before the Cabinet on Monday and then introduced in Parliament later during the week.
Soon after a long meeting with Ms. Banerjee to mainly discuss the Draft Land Acquisition Bill, he said: “We have fully incorporated the 12-page note given by former bureaucrat Debu [Debabrata] Bandyopadhyay and have made necessary changes too.”
The West Bengal Land Policy, now under finalisation, was referred to a committee which is headed by Mr. Bandyopadhyay. During his last visit on July 30 to discuss the Bill with the Trinamool Congress chief, Mr. Ramesh had met up with Mr. Bandyopadhyay.
He said that aspects like public purpose and compensation to people who lost their livelihood had been incorporated based on the discussions. Mr. Ramesh said: “Land is a State subject, while land acquisition is a concurrent subject and we have to be very careful.”
He said that now, broad support had been obtained from Ms. Banerjee.
“She will support the Bill at the Cabinet meeting,” he said, adding that some concerns were expressed on whether the central law would make the State government go for forceful acquisition.
Indicating that the Centre would reiterate and clarify the issue to address Ms. Banerjee's concerns, he said provisions could be added to the law.
New legislation
Pointing out that the Chief Minister had liked many aspects of the Rehabilitation and Resettlement provisos in the proposed new legislation, Mr. Ramesh said that Ms. Banerjee mentioned that she may like to introduce some of these points in the State's land policy.
Rural development projects
On the rural development projects that he had discussed with the Chief Minister, Mr. Ramesh said that if proposals were received soon, the Centre could clear these projects by November.
He added that some of the programmes like the Integrated Water Management programme was particularly relevant for the Maoist areas
