Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh has conceded that several chief minister, icluding some from the Congress, had expressed reservations with the UPA's land acquisition law.
Former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today admitted that several chief ministers, including some from the Congress, expressed "fears and concerns" about implementing the UPA's 2013 Land Acquisition Bill.
Speaking exclusively to NDTV, Mr Ramesh said, "It would be wrong on my part to deny it. Yes, people had fears, people have concerns when you were bringing in something that is dramatically new, something that's really a revolution in terms of thinking... So, there are fears and chief ministers expressed their fears. No doubt about it. Chief Ministers wrote to our government and they have written to this government."
Jairam Ramesh's comments are significant, as ministers in the Modi government, like Nitin Gadkari and Birender Singh, have often argued that state governments including Congress-led ones wrote to them asking the land law to be amended.
Mr Ramesh, considered to be the architect of the UPA's land bill, said Congress-led state governments didn't oppose UPA's law, but did have apprehensions about what he calls "revolutionary" clauses - the consent clause and the one that mandated state governments to carry out social impact assessment before land acquisition.
"The fact that you can acquire land only after consent of the farmer is a revolution in our thinking. The notion that you can acquire land only after a social impact assessment lasting for no more than six months is a revolution in our thinking," said Mr Ramesh. "The Act was not given any chance to be implemented. This propaganda that thousands of acres of land have not allowed to be acquired is bunkum. It is simply not true," he added.
Mr Ramesh also didn't agree that political parties who are running state governments found it difficult to implement the UPA's land bill. "We are also running state governments. Trinamool is also running a state government and they are strictly opposed to NDA's amendment. Nitish Kumar is sitting on a dharna," he countered and asserted, "The ground reality is that the farmers were very happy, livelihood losers were very happy, tribals were very happy and the bill balanced the rights of the land owners and the livelihood losers."