Land Bill: PM Modi instructs junior ministers to tour villages for quashing misconception

NEW DELHI: At a meeting of BJP’s parliamentary managers in the last session of Parliament, a list of probable speakers to open the debate for the government on the Union Budget was being carefully gone into.

Several young MPs and even senior ones were desirous of making the cut, but Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu was firm, it would be former Lohiaite turned BJP MP Hukum Deo Narayan Yadav who would open the debate for the government.

Yadav proceeded to demolish what he termed the Opposition’s "false concern" for the rural poor, but in this case it was who he was rather than what he said that was of use to his party. "With the land bill, an impression is being created that this government is for corporates and is anti-farmer. We have to dispel this perception," said a senior minister in the NDA government.

Therefore, senior ministers along with their juniors are being deployed to try and combat what the government is terming the "most serious propaganda challenge" for the Modi government.

Senior leadership in the government – ET spoke to at least three Cabinet ministers – confirm that the core fighting unit in attempting to sell the NDA version of the land bill are Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu. These three ministers will try and drum up support by talking to other political parties.

Junior ministers have been personally instructed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make a rural detour to every possible tour out of Delhi. So it was that Jaitley and Minister of State For Medium and Small Scale Enterprises Giriraj Singh were in Boondi in Rajasthan last week to visit farmers affected by crop loss due to unseasonal rain, and Food Supplies Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and his junior minister Sanjiv Baliyan were in Punjab this week for the same.

"Other tours will happen. It’s just been a perfect storm of rural distress to be accompanying an important bill like this. First the controversy over fertiliser distribution, then unseasonal rains which have led to massive crop loss," said the source.