New Delhi: The Budget session of Parliament ends in a little over two weeks and the Narendra Modi government is again running out of time to push its crucial land acquisition bill, which makes it easier to acquire land for industrial and key infrastructural projects.
Senior ministers told NDTV that the government plans to bring the bill in Parliament next week, after it has had other key legislation like the Goods and Services Tax bill, the black money bill and the finance bill passed.
It must finish Financial and Budget business by tomorrow evening, and wants to prioritise the GST to signal that it is not falling back on key bills it promised to clear.
But that will leave only seven working days for the land bill, since Parliament will be closed over a long weekend from May 1 to 4, and some in ruling party BJP are now suggesting that maybe the government should not take up the bill at all in this session.
The argument - the bill will not clear the Rajya Sabha or upper house in any case, and the government will then have to extend its life as an ordinance or an emergency executive order till the next session.
The opposition has vowed to stall the bill, which it calls anti-farmer, once more. The Congress led the opposition in stalling it in the Rajya Sabha in March, during the first part of the Budget session and the government had to renew its land ordinance.
It will have no problem pushing the bill through the Lok Sabha, like it did last month, with its big majority. But in the Rajya Sabha, the government is in a minority.
The Modi government had planned to move the amended land acquisition bill this week, but reportedly put that on hold after a farmer from Rajasthan hanged himself at an Aam Aadmi Party rally on April 22, which was called to protest against the land bill.
With unseasonal rains damaging the crop, the focus is again on farmers' woes and the government can ill-afford to be seen as insensitive to their demands. The Congress, led by an aggressive vice-president Rahul Gandhi, recently back from a 56-day sabbatical, drew about 70,000 farmers at a rally it called against the land bill last week.
Like Rahul Gandhi, the Left has linked recent farmer suicides to the government's land reforms.