Hannan Mollah and Atul Kumar Anjan, general secretaries of All India Kisan Sabha and All India Kisan Sabha (Windsor Place) have jointly issued the following statement on January 13: WE condemn the BJP government’s undemocratic move to amend the Land Acquisition legislation through an ordinance without going to the parliament. The move is clearly aimed to promote profiteering and real estate speculation by the corporates and land mafia. It further dilutes the existing Act which itself was flawed and loaded heavily against the interests of peasantry, land owners and dependents on land. It in effect re-instates the most draconian elements of the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894. The ordinance ignores genuine concerns of farmers and millions of persons dependent on land. Our kisan organisations reject this anti-farmer and anti-poor ordinance. The ordinance paves way for forcible and indiscriminate land acquisition by doing away with the need for consent of the land owners and the social impact assessment. The definition of public purpose is further diluted and will bring private companies and their activities of unbridled profiteering into public purpose and promote further unregulated takeover of land by corporates. Food security will be seriously compromised as it will now be possible to easily acquire multi-cropped fertile land as well as productive rain-fed and semi-arid land for industrial corridors, infrastructure projects including the PPP projects. Along with multi-cropped, irrigated lands protection for rain-fed, dry-land, semi-arid land as well as paddy lands, common property resources are indispensable to ensure food and livelihood security. The provision to substitute “private company” with “private entity” is a blatant attempt to widen the scope of land grabbing. The provision to include private hospitals and private educational institutions under social infrastructure category thus to enable cheap and compulsory acquisition of land cannot be accepted. The government claim of bringing 13 Acts under the purview of the Land Acquisition Act would be rendered hollow by the new changes as well as the diluted nature of the provisions. It has actually expanded the list of exemptions and also has diluted the provision requiring returning back of land if unused for five years. There is no emphasis on promotion of food security and livelihood security through the adherence to an equitable and sustainable national as well as State Land Use Plans monitored by Land Use Commissions at respective levels. Hence there is no guarantee that the land acquired for a project will be the bare minimum required and will open way for large scale acquisition at cheap rates to suit the interests of the land mafia including for foreign players. The ordinance is merely an instrument for speedy expropriation and facilitation of land acquisition in a quick, cheap and easy way with little concern for consent, adequate compensation and rehabilitation of landowners and other dependents on land. We will unite with all kisan organisations and agricultural workers’ unions, civil society groups as well as all democratic sections against the unjust ordinance and resist any moves to hand-over land for corporate profiteering and without ensuring prior informed consent. We solicit the support of all political parties to scrap the ordinance. We shall build broad united movements at all sites of indiscriminate, unjust land acquisition and fight to protect the rights of the peasantry, tenants, agricultural workers and all affected persons. We will jointly organise protests at all district headquarters and burn the authoritarian ordinance on January 30, 2015. A massive protest demonstration will be organised jointly before the parliament during the budget session.