ET Global Business Summit: FM Arun Jaitley dares Congress-ruled states to follow old land act

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday indicated the government would not hesitate to steamroll obstructions to its growth plans as he dared the Congress party, which has opposed the changes to the Land Acquisition Act, to continue to follow the old legislation in states it rules, thereby implicitly suggesting that even Congress chief ministers didn’t want the old Act.

Saying India was in the throes of “competitive federalism” with states competing for investor money and on economic growth, Jaitley, speaking at the Economic Times Global Business Summit, said state governments today could no longer afford policies that did not favour attracting investments.

Defending the changes to the land acquisition legislation, Jaitley said despite the changes to the act brought about using the ordinance route, state governments nevertheless had the choice to follow the old one.

CREEPING ACQUISITION OF RAJYA SABHA NUMBERS

“I would like to see which Congress chief minister will stand up and follow what the party’s central leadership is saying,” the finance minister said to guffaws from a packed star-studded audience in Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel that included senior cabinet ministers and top businessmen including Gautam Adani, Sunil Mittal, NR Narayana Murthy and Sunil Munjal, along with top diplomats and global luminaries.

“(An) Investor, like the consumer, is king. He has a choice of which country and which state to invest in,” he said, indicating that the political discourse was being reshaped in a country impatient to achieve better. The Modi-led government has issued a slew of ordinances after its efforts at changing laws through the parliamentary route were frustrated by a united opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP-led NDA has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha, but lacks numbers in the Upper House of Parliament and is therefore vulnerable to stalling tactics by the Opposition.

However, Jaitley, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest advisors and a major architect of the BJP’s electoral victory, said people in India were yearning for decisive action and would punish obstructions, and reminded political rivals of the “creeping acquisition” of Rajya Sabha numbers that was underway. The BJP has won a spate of state elections in recent months and if that trend continues, experts reckon the party could have a majority in the upper house too in about two years.

Jaitley also defended the government’s decision to resort to ordinances and said that while it preferred persuasion to force, it was faced with little choice. “We tried the persuasion route because that’s the best route... Some of them (proposed legislations) I have personally handed over to the Opposition. So far my bad luck is that I have not been able to convince them on laws which they themselves had introduced,” he said in combative comments interpreted to mean that the government could call a joint session of Parliament to pass pending Bills.