[Marxistindia] CC Meeting -- Day 1 -- release

[news from the cpi(m)]

Press Release

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) began its
three day session at the Pragathinagar, Hyderabad today.

On behalf of the Polit Bureau, General Secretary Prakash Karat placed the
“Draft Review Report on the Political Tactical Line”, in the morning
session. Several Central Committee members participated in the discussion,
which is going on.

The meeting also adopted a resolution against the ordinance promulgated by
the Modi government amending the Land Acquisition Act, which the Central
Committee characterized as “utterly anti farmer and anti rural poor in its
substance”. (text of resolution is also being released herewith)


Resolution

Resolution against Ordinance on Land Acquisition Act

The Central Committee of the CPI(M condemns the Black Ordinance amending
the Land Act of 2013, brought by the Modi Government and calls for the
widest mobilizations of the kisans and rural poor to force its reversal.
The Modi Government has shown its contempt for Parliament and democratic
norms by adopting the ordinance route in its eagerness to satiate the
demands of corporates and FDI.

The ordinance is both authoritarian in its method and utterly anti farmer
and anti rural poor in its substance.

The Ordinance brings in a new chapter 3A into the Principal Act of 2013 .
This addition expands the definition of public purpose by including five
new sectors almost every project from irrigation to power and through
another amendment to private hospitals and private educational
institutions from the necessity of getting consent from farmers whose land
is being acquired. It does not differentiate between Government and public
sector projects from those in the private sector. Thus in effect it is
even worse than the 1894 Act .

The Ordinance also exempts all these projects from the necessity of a
social impact assessment (SIA). SIA is an important process for an
impartial assessment of how much land is actually required for a project,
how many families are going to be affected, whether or not there is any
alternative less displacing land available and so on. It is known that
corporate take over much more land than the actual project requires and
also fudge figures of those affected. The Ordinance also removes any limit
on the time that the land can be held by the company which has acquired it
if it has not set up the project. The 2013 Act had kept 5 years as the
limit after which the land would have to be returned.

The Ordinance permits easy acquisition of multi-cropped land by excluding
a large number of projects from the entire Chapter 3 of the Act of 2013
which deals with this subject. This will undoubtedly bring not only
distress to farmers who enjoy a good income when land is well irrigated
and supports multi-cropping but will also have a negative impact on food
security.

The Ordinance is thus totally against the interest of farmers. The CPI(M)
had been critical of the earlier Act of 2013 for being inadequate in its
protection of farmers and other project affected sections. But this
ordinance eliminates even the protections which were included in the Act
after the struggle of farmers, their democratic organizations and the Left
parties.

CPI(M) units all over India have already started the struggle and campaign
against this Black ordinance. The Central Committee calls for a broad
based united struggle of all the political forces and mass organizations
opposed to this onslaught on farmers’ rights.

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