Tough going for land, labour, education Bills

Sreelatha Menon & Saubhadra Chatterji / New Delhi October 14, 2008, 1:02 IST The fate of three key social sector Bills concerning land, education and labour continues to be uncertain although they are all set to make it to the Lok Sabha this session. Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is worried about the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill and the amendments to the Land Acquisition Act. Together, these two pieces of legislation will settle the issue of how land should be acquired for industrialisation, both by the state and the private sector. But if the Bills are not passed in the life of this Lok Sabha, the whole process of fashioning the policy will have to be started anew by the next government. As the parliamentary standing committee on rural development is yet to finalise its report, Singh has... [read full story]