Land Bill reduced to 'Hamlet without Prince of Denmark': Congress

NEW DELHI: Alleging the Centre of reducing the crucial Land Acquisition Bill to the status of a "Hamlet without the Prince", Congress today said that his party will oppose the ordinance on it in the upcoming Budget Session, as "ordinance cannot be the default mode of legislation".

"Emergent pressing exigencies are required for bringing an ordinance. It is not a norm. It is certainly not made to be a default mode of legislation for passing key laws. But this government has brought eight ordinances in seven months since it came to power.

"Ordinance bypasses Parliament. In bypassing Parliament, you also bypass democracy," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, ruing the land acquisition bill was not a normal one and law and was brought after years of discussion and persuasion and it was "unequivocally supported" by the BJP one year ago.

He alleged that by bringing the ordinance, the government by the stroke of a pen within one week after Parliament session was over, brought such changes in the land bill that "this is now virtually a Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark."

"It's only shell of the Land Acquisition that we brought replacing the old 1894 law. It has now become just like the old one and has no soul or substance," Singhvi said.

Coining an acronym of "FAIL", the Congress spokesperson alleged that Modi government stands for anti-farmer, anti accountability, intolerance and divisive politics and anti- land acquisition.

He also took potshots at the BJP for demanding that Congress President Sonia Gandhi should apologise from the nation after BJP chief Amit Shah's discharge in Sohrabuddin fake encounter killing case, rejecting allegation that it "misused" CBI against its opponents during the UPA rule.

Singhvi said that the order at the lowest rung of the judiciary is "just the beginning" in the mutli-layered judicial process and expressed confidence that the higher courts would overturn the order as "it is highly untenable".