The Awami League-led government will not pass the proposed law aimed at returning “illegally leased and occupied land” in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to the repatriated hill people in its present tenure although it promised to do so.
The parliamentary standing committee on land ministry, which was tasked with scrutinising the Chittagong Hill Tracts Land Dispute Resolution (amendment) Bill 2013 initiated in June, on Monday declined to approve the bill.
“Our observation is: We need further discussions on the bill. It will be finalised at the next meeting, if necessary,” committee member Md Shahab Uddin told the Dhaka Tribune after a meeting of the committee.
He, however, said on Monday’s meeting was the last in this tenure of the government. “Unless the government instructs us, we will not meet again,” he said.
According to parliamentary rules, recommendations of the standing committee concerned in favour of passage of a bill is a must for law making.
The current parliament will end as soon as the Election Commission announces the schedule for the 10th parliamentary polls.
Leaders of the ethnic minority people in the CHT and the government had dissenting views on the return of land in line with the Chittagong Hill Tracts Land Dispute Resolution Commission Act 2001.
According to the act, the CHT Land Dispute Resolution Commission, headed by a retired justice of the Supreme Court, will settle land disputes of hill people repatriated from India in line with the laws and tradition of the CHT.
But the ethnic leaders said the land of the hill people, who had fled to India after August 1975 to evade the conflicts between the armed group Shanti Bahini and the army and returned after 1997, was “illegally leased out and went to the grabbers.”
They said the 2001 law had no mention of settlement of such land.
In the CHT peace treaty with the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity, the government had promised to return the land to the repatriated people by setting up a land dispute resolution commission.
In June this year, the ethnic leaders met government policymakers who agreed to insert a provision to mandate the commission to return the “illegally leased and occupied land” to the hill people.
According to the decision, Land Minister Rezaul Karim Hira tabled the amendment bill in parliament.
The law also proposes curtailing the authority of the chairman of the five-member commission.
In the 2001 act, the chairman’s decision is considered as the decision of the commission. The amendment proposed that the commission take decision according to the opinion of the majority of the members.
Standing committee members Land Minister Rezaul Karim Hira, Md Motiur Rahman, Benjir Ahmed and Ranajit Kumar Roy attended the meeting with AKM Mozammel Hoque in the chair.
