A meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Land Acquisition Bill was cancelled on Tuesday for lack of quorum as only six of the 31 members turned up.
The panel members have been questioning the relevance of the committee since the government itself has given up on the Bill. They were given notice for the meeting three weeks ago and repeated reminders were issued.
“They’ve lost the plot. Chairman [a BJP MP] of the Parliament Committee on Land Acquisition Act calls meeting. Woefully short of quorum. 6/31 MPs. Meeting called off. Even BJP members ditch,” Derek O’Brien, Trinamool Congress MP and member of the committee, tweeted.
Widespread opposition
The six members who came for the meeting were Mr. O’Brien, B. Mahtab of the BJD and Chairman Ganesh Singh and three others from the BJP.
The JPC was set up in May 2015 after many political parties, even BJP allies, cane out against the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015. It has had 25 sittings. “The committee should finalise its report and table it in Parliament. It may either reject the Bill or try to build unanimity on the contentious clauses. Either way, it has dragged on for too long,” Mr. Mahtab told The Hindu. The onus was on the Chairperson to bring out a report.
Pointless, says Cong.
Within months of introducing the Bill in his monthly radio address, Mann Ki Baat, in August 2015, Prime Minister Modi said it would go, and asked the State governments to bring in their own versions.
The Congress members have stopped coming to the meetings, saying there was no point in it since the government itself has killed the Bill. Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar, at a meeting last June, concurred with the Congress.
However, the Biju Janta Dal and others have said the Bill is the property of Parliament and the government needs to make a statement in Parliament to clear its intent.
The Bill seeks to remove the consent clause for acquiring land for industrial corridors, public-private projects, rural infrastructure, affordable housing and defence.
