Land acquisition panel fails to hold meet

New Delhi: The Joint Parliamentary Committee popularly known as Land Acquisition Committee could not hold its first meeting of this year due to lack of quorum. Out of 31 members of the committee, only six of them were turned up on Tuesday.

Though the Central Government, after a lot of protest on the proposed amendment to the Land Acquisition Act, put on hold for implementation, a joint parliamentary committee was formed three years ago to deliberate on the proposed amendment. In fact, in one of the ''Maan Ki Baat" radio speeches, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself announced to postpone the proposed legislation.

Chairman of the committee, BJP MP Ganesh Sing, had suddenly called a meeting of the Joint Committee on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015 on Tuesday afternoon in the Parliament House.

The agenda of the meeting was also circulated to the members of the committee much before the meeting. Tuesday's agenda was also to discuss evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways along with National Highways Authority of India on the issues involved in the context of examination of Clause 6 and 11 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Second Bill, 2015 and other related matters.

One of the members of the committee, Derek O'Brien, a TMC leader in Rajya Sabha, tweeted later in the day that "they have lost the plot. Chairman of parliament committee on Land acquisition Act calls a meeting. Woefully short of the quorum. Meeting called off. Even BJP members ditch him." Out of 31 members, ruling BJP has a strength of 15 members. If they would have come the meeting could continue.

But, the important point to be noted that ruling BJP party has not lost hope for the controversial bill, though the original bill was shelved by the Prime Minister himself. Last year, the committee met four times and the last meeting was held in the month of November 2017. The issues discussed there were to review the information and data received from the State Governments/UT Administrations and Union Ministries/Departments , evidence of the representatives of the State Government of Karnataka, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of NCT of Delhi and Delhi Development Authority on the issues involved in the context of Clause 6 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, Evidence of the representatives of the State Government of Madhya Pradesh, the Ministry of Coal alongwith Coal India Limited and the Ministry of Mines,and the evidence of the ministry of Defence and Railways.