‘Thieves wearing suits are now striking in daylight’

Leading the opposition attack, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused the Modi government of “murdering” the UPA’s Land Bill.

He warned the government that his party will oppose its move inside Parliament as well as outside.

Participating in a debate on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Second Bill, 2015, Rahul alleged that the government is in a hurry to pass the Bill.

“This government wants to give land to crony capitalists and its industrialist friends because it’s a suit-boot

ki sarkar ,” he said amidst protests from the treasury bench, which was present in full strength.

The Congress-led UPA government had taken over two years to enact a new land law, but the present government took just a few days after coming to power to kill it, Rahul alleged.

“The first blow with an axe was right at its (Bill) throat when the government decided to remove the consent clause. When the body had fallen, then it dealt a second blow of the axe. You said there should be no social impact assessment,” he said in a rather dramatic manner.

Further, the law enacted in 2013 had a provision that land acquired from a farmer will have to be returned to the farmer if no project comes up in five years.

“This was the third blow — when you said that there is no need to return land to farmers even if the project does not take off or is delayed by 10, 20 or 50 years,” he said.

Land boom

Terming the government as anti-farmer and anti-poor, Rahul said it does not want to acquire land in Bundelkhand or in the deserts of Rajasthan but those near big cities like Noida, Gurgaon and Pune, to cash in on the land price boom there. “Gold lies beneath your feet. These people want to snatch it,” he said. Rahul also lamented the lack of social impact assessment in the new Land Bill.

He further wondered why senior BJP leaders LK Advani, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj had supported the UPA Land Bill but declared it ineffective as soon as they came to power.

He ended his speech by drawing a parallel between a daylight robbery and the proposed law, saying an economist had told him that thieves wearing suits now strike during daylight.