A Singur Bill now

A day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee hurriedly announced the ordinance to take back the Singur land from the Tatas, the state government stopped short of issuing the notification, apparently due to some “procedural problems” that Governor M K Narayanan came to know of only after he put his signature on the ordinance. The chief minister took it in her stride and announced the government would not issue any ordinance, and instead table the land reclamation bill in the assembly. The governor’s address has been brought forward to June 13 to speed up the process. “The ordinance is ready, but we are not notifying it. Initially, I was thinking of promulgating an ordinance because we are committed to returning land to the unwilling farmers of Singur, who have been waiting for a long time. But now that the assembly session has been preponed, we have decided to table the Singur bill the day after, on June 14. For, an ordinance has to be ratified in the assembly within six months of its promulgation,” Mamata said. The buzz was in the corridors of power since morning, soon after the governor took note of the opposition view. A Left Front delegation, led by leader of the opposition Surjyakanta Mishra, called on Narayanan on Friday and pointed out the government was trying to promulgate an ordinance when the assembly was in session. The CM begged to differ. “The House begins with the governor’s address. But here, the practice seems to be different. The House possibly begins the day the members are sworn in,” Mamata said. Parliamentary procedure apart, the draft ordinance had limitations in terms of administrative practice as well, sources said. The proposal for promulgating an ordinance, the sources added, did not come up in the cabinet meeting. Cabinet members were informed the government was examining legal ways to return 400 acres of land in Singur but the issue of promulgating an ordinance never came up in the cabinet, sources said. Even officials of the land and land revenue department learnt about the ordinance from the media because they were not consulted, the sources added. On Friday, the governor called chief secretary Samar Ghosh to give him a piece of his mind on the procedural limitations since the ordinance allegedly did not have the chief secretary’s signature.