Union Finance Minister Jaitley AccusesCongress MP Anand Sharma of Adopting Double Standards in Land Bill

26 Feb, New Delhi

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today accused Congress leader Anand Sharma of adopting double standards in the case of government’s proposed land reforms bill.

Participating in the discussion on Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address in Rajya Sabha, Mr. Jaitley read out a letter in the House written by Sharma, when he was Commerce Minister during UPA government in 2012. Jaitley said Sharma had supported the same views in the letter, which the Congress is currently objecting to in the proposed Land Reforms Bill, 2015.

Sharma had written to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the need to take the consent of farmers for land acquisition would seriously hamper infrastructure projects and slow down urbanization. He had written that the insistence on consent of the affected families will seriously delay land acquisition and may even halt essential infrastructure projects.

However, Anand Sharma, later speaking to media outside Parliament said that he stands by what he stated then because he had talked about National Investment Manufacturing Zones and not about giving land to private sector.

Finance Minister said Jaitley has broken the ethics. A communication between a cabinet minister and the Prime Minister should not have been made public. Congress had strongly protested against the consent clause in the government’s proposed changes in land rules.