States empowered to amend 2013 land law: Jaitley

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 1

States are fully empowered to amend the “badly drafted” 2013 land law and seek Presidential assent before the amendment can be effected, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said, effectively putting the ball in court of states, particularly the Congress-ruled ones, to bring any changes, if they wanted to, in the Act formulated by the previous UPA government. 

According to Jaitley, at a meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all Chief Ministers advocated “flexibility” to bring their own amendments “if the stalemate at the Centre continues”. 

Penning an article “The Land Ordinance — The obvious reasons” on the day the NDA’s executive order bringing in the 13 excluded central legislations under the purview of the 2013 land Act came into force, Jaitley said: “If any state wishes to make some amendments to the Central (land) law, the same would be permitted by the Central Government… states can provide for alternative mechanism which balances the interests of farmers and also provides for land required for acquisition.”

Notably, inclusion of the 13 exempted Acts such as the Metro Railways Act, 1978; National Highways Act, 1956, Electricity Act, 2003; and the Railways Act, 1989, is being seen as a “strategic political decision” by the NDA to corner the Congress-ruled states, which had fought the NDA’s new Bill as “anti-farmer and anti-poor”.

In other words, if the states want to acquire land they would have to find ways to relax the law. “You will see how difficult it becomes to acquire even an inch of land now. It is over to states, including those ruled by the Congress, to manage their individual land acquisition needs .They have rejected cooperative federalism so let then try competitive federalism now,” a BJP leader commented.

Meanwhile, terming the UPA’s law a “badly drafted legislation with a lot of ambiguities and obvious errors”, Jaitley accused the Congress of changing position on the land Bill after the Modi government brought an ordinance — the object of which was to give certain amount of “flexibility” to the states as “they know their requirements the best”. “A series of legitimate difficulties would arise once the Act (2013) is seriously implemented,” he said as he trashed Congress’ claim that the 2013 law provided for consent of the farmers before the land was acquired which was snatched away by the one drafted by the NDA government.