The government can only repromulgate the ordinance when Parliament is not in session
The Union Cabinet will decide next steps on the Land Acquisition Bill, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today as Parliament closed for a month-long recess in the Budget Session. The ordinance or emergency executive order that the bill seeks to ratify, lapses on April 5, during the recess.
The government can only repromulgate the ordinance when Parliament is not in session and is reportedly now contemplating proroguing the Budget session or then one of the Houses of whose property the bill is.
The bill sailed through the Lok Sabha or Lower House, where the government has a big majority, but is yet to be presented in the Rajya Sabha in the face of the Congress-led opposition's firm rejection of it as "anti-farmer".
While passing the bill in the Lower House the government introduced nine amendments to placate critics and get opposition parties on board, but it has failed to do so. Earlier this week, 14 parties marched to the Rashtrapati Bhawan led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi in protest against the land bill.
Faced with such opposition, the government has not introduced the bill passed by Lok Sabha in the upper house as it fears that the united Opposition will send the bill to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny thus blocking its immediate passage.
The government is minority in the Rajya Sabha and needs the help of other parties to pass legislation. It managed to push several of its key bills through Parliament in the first part of the session - the mines and coal bills on the last day today - only because opposition parties supported them.
Parties like the Trinamool Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party and NCP helped the government pass the mines and coal bills today. The Congress had supported the Insurance bill in the Rajya Sabha. All these parties oppose the land bill, which makes it easier to make acquire land for big projects and is seen as crucial to the Modi governments reforms agenda.