-The Business Standard   A major blow was delivered to the National Advisory Council’s capacity to intervene in decisionmaking by the government with the Ministry of Rural development sticking to the formulation that if a private company wants to set up industry, it must buy 70 per cent of the land itself. All that the state government will do is buy for the investor, 30 per cent of the land, that...

-The Asian Age   The draft Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill being vetted by the Union law ministry maintains the 70:30 formula — a private developer has to acquire at least 70 per cent of the land, the remainder to be done by the government. This goes against the National Advisory Council proposal that the government acquire 100 per cent of land, while West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s stand is that...

The impasse over Land Acquisition for the Posco project cast a shadow on Rath Yatra festivities in Dhinkia gram panchayat area in Jagatsinghpur district on Sunday. The number of villagers thronging the annual car festival at the Jagannath temple at Gadakujang had reduced drastically, pointing to the uncertainty prevailing among the people in the area. "The residents of Dhinkia, Gobindapur, Patana, Trilochanpur and other villages are now oscillating between despair...

-The Business Standard   Political rhetoric dominated the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) annual executive committee meet today, even as two key faces of Mamata Banerjee’s administration reiterated the government’s stance of not acquiring land for industry. “Under no circumstances will the government acquire land for the industry,” Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal’s commerce and industries minister told the industry body. Also present at the event was state’s finance...

The Union rural development ministry has retained in the draft of an amendment a partial government role in Land Acquisition for private investors, vetoing the diametrically conflicting views of Mamata Banerjee and a panel headed by Sonia Gandhi. The draft finalised by the ministry to amend the Land Acquisition act has stuck to the 70-30 formula under which the private investor is expected to buy at least 70 per cent of...