Controversial enemy property bill rejected

A controversial bill to enable legal heirs of those who migrated to Pakistan to hold on to their property was unanimously rejected by a Parliamentary Standing Committee which has asked the government to bring a fresh legislation.
     
The Standing Committee on Home Affairs, which comprises MPs belonging to different political parties and headed by BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu, said the proposed amendment to the Enemy Property Act, 1968 "fails" to satisfy the expectations of interested people.
    
The Committee's report, submitted to Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari on Thursday, said it "strongly feels" that the enemy properties worth crores of rupees should not go into the hands of those who do not have any legitimate claim over them.
    
Through an Act in 1968, the government had declared the properties left behind by people who migrated to Pakistan during partition as 'enemy properties'.
    
The issue of enemy property came into limelight recently when government wanted to make an amendment to the law to prevent Indian family members of those who migrated to Pakistan from going to court to regain possession of the properties of their forefathers that had been seized as 'enemy property', thereby, vesting it in a custodian.
    
However, due to repeated pleas and lobbying by various Muslim MPs, including several ministers, the government wanted to make further amendment which will ensure that legal heirs are allowed to hold the property of their parents or grandparents who had migrated to Pakistan.

"The Committee would like to stress that an heir should get only what the propositus had," the report said.
   
It also took note of the opinion of eminent lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who said that when a person is dead, his heir gets what he owned. Even if he is an Indian national and the heir of his father, he gets what the father had, but if the father did not have the property, the property would belong to the Indian nation and he would get zero.
   
The Committee noted that a "peculiar situation" arises, wherein it appears, that the whole issue has been "messed up". The ordinance and the first bill, at least, met the expectation and satisfaction of some interested people and even the government strongly felt it the right course at one time.
    
However, the second bill fails on all counts so far as satisfaction and expectations of interested people concerned. Disagreement from the group, which supported ordinance and the first bill, is understandable, but strangely, thev bill has also disapproval, in strong words, by the very individual, who was the main party in the Supreme Court.
    
"The Committee, therefore, fails to understand what the government wants to achieve by bringing this second bill," the report said.
    
The members of the Committee unanimously felt that it was not convinced by the spirit behind the provisions of the Enemy Property (Amendment & Validation) Second Bill, 2010. The members felt that the government could not explain the reasons as to why the second bill was brought before Parliament replacing the earlier bill.