Land Bill debate: BJP fishes out Nehru quote to counter Congress

NEW DELHI: There are some unlikely faces set to feature in the fierce debate between the NDA government and Congress-led Opposition over the land acquisition legislation. Former Prime Ministers Jawahar Lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi will be part of the government’s attack on Congress, which has positioned itself as a pro-farmer party.

Nehru’s speech at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Hirakud Dam over the Mahanadi in 1948 will be part of the attack on Congress. Top sources in the government told ET that senior ministers, who will be defending the bill in Parliament, have decided to go for the jugular, in this case both Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s track record on rehabilitation, and what they had to say about oustees of projects and big dams.

Nehru had exhorted oustees of the project to look at their suffering as forming part of the greater common good. “If you have to suffer, you should do so in the interest of the country,” he had said in his speech.

“Nehru asked people to suffer for others, this is what he felt when it came to his favourite projects like big dams which he referred to as Temples of Modern India,” said a senior Cabinet minister, who is part of the group of four ministers made responsible for passage of the bill through Parliament.

Indira Gandhi’s letters, especially one that she wrote to Baba Amte, in response to the latter’s concerns on the rehabilitation of tribals ousted from yet another project area is also being examined. “In this letter, written in the early 1980s, Indira Gandhi too echoes her father in being less than concerned over the rehabilitation issues,” said the minister.

“I am most unhappy that development projects displace tribal people from their habitat, especially as project authorities do not always take care to properly rehabilitate the affected population.

But sometimes there is no alternative and we have to go ahead in the larger interest,” says Indira Gandhi in this letter. “Our ordinance in contrast is just, and Congress shedding crocodile tears for the farmer now must be exposed,” said the minister.