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Jairam proposes big role for gram sabhas in tribal land acquisition
- Having introduced the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill in Parliament, Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, who also holds the Department of Land Resources, aims to address other aspects relating to land and reform the sector.
- He has posted an agenda for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's perusal with a request to convene the National Council of Land Reforms under him to speed up the process of reforms that entails amendments to at least two legislations.
- In Mr. Ramesh's latest proposal, the States, which have a crucial role to play in matters of land, are required to have all issues related to tribal land to be decided at gram sabhas. This will make land acquisition in forest areas and tribal habitations more difficult for private players.
- To end alienation of tribals that had led to spread of Naxalism among them and bring them into the mainstream, the other proposals include withdrawal of cases relating to encroachment and minor forest offences. The tribals will also benefit from the Centre's proposed move to launch a scheme for homestead rights to provide land for each homeless rural poor.
- The Centre intends to conduct surveys for a better understanding of the status of Bhoodan Land, common property resources in villages and settlement operations in tribal sub-plan areas.
- To monitor evasion of ceiling laws through fraudulent land transaction, the government has proposes amendment to the Benami Transactions (Prohibitions of the Right to Recover Property) Act, 1989 and to put a ban on exemptions on diversion of land in Scheduled areas and also on transfers of common property and agricultural land for SEZ purposes proposed to amend the SEZ Act, 2005.
Rangarajan heads expert committee on sugar sector
- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has constituted an Expert Committee (headed by C. Rangarajan, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister) to look into all the issues relating to ‘de-regulation' of the sugar sector.
- The sugar industry has been demanding de-control of the sector on the plea that the mandatory requirement of selling 10 per cent of production at below-cost rates for supply to the ration shops is crippling it.
- Another key demand is to do away with the system under which the Food Ministry decides on the quantity of the sugar that can be sold in the open market every month.
UIDAI's mandate expanded
- In a bid to end the turf war between the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which comes under the Planning Commission, and the Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR), a Cabinet Committee has worked out a compromise that will result in the biometric data of all residents being captured by June 2013.
- The UIDAI has been given permission — and finances to the tune of an additional 5,791 crore — to enrol another 40 crore people in 16 States under its Aadhaar scheme. The NPR will accept the biometric data collected by the UIDAI in those States and continue to collect its own data through the Registrar-General of India in the remaining States.
- In return, UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani has promised to address the Home Ministry's security concerns
- While the UIDAI is a voluntary scheme, the NPR is mandatory for all residents. What this means is that if a resident has enrolled himself with the UIDAI and has had his fingerprints and iris scanned, he can merely give his Aadhaar number to the NPR registrars rather than submitting himself to biometric data collection twice.
- Mr. Chidambaram said the duplication between the two agencies would be not be more than 5 per cent, reducing the expenditure on biometric data collection. In case of “discrepancies between UIDAI data and NPR data, NPR will prevail.”
