Won't let Land Act provisions dilute: Kamal Nath

Dated 24th November, 2014

With the onset of the winter session of Parliament today, the Modi government will face its first major test to push ahead with its reforms agenda. The constitutional amendment to facilitate the goods & services tax (GST), Land Acquisition Act will be amongst several crucial bills to bolster the Centre's economic reforms memo. In an interview, Lok Sabha speaker Kamal Nath says they will not let the government dilute the Land Acquisition Act, as the Act has been finalised after a lot of deliberations. Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview:

Q: You said you will not let the government dilute the Land Acquisition Act?

A: The whole country has seen the role the opposition played by being obstructive, by disrupting the house and by clearly not letting the government do its business in Parliament. I am afraid the Prime Minister was in Gujarat at that time and did not know the happenings in Parliament.

Q: Several key legislations coming be it coal, be it GST, be it the land acquisition related amendments, what will be the Congress party’s stand in all these key legislations?

A: We are very clear that let them bring these legislations and whatever points of view we have, we will put them across but most important of all land acquisition bill and any effort to dilute it which has come after great deliberations will be strongly opposed by us.

Q: GST in insurance?

A: Let it come. Insurance was our proposition and let the report from the committee come and depending on the report, we will take a position on it.

Q: Is it a done deal on insurance?

A: Insurance was again our bill and it was the obstructionism by the BJP at that time because of which the bill could not be passed, so insurance we will not have strong views.

(This interview is published in moneycontrol.com on 24th Nov,2014)