With the Rajya Sabha being adjourned on Thursday without transacting any business because of a member’s death, and Friday reserved for private members’ business, the government is left with a narrow window to pass the Enemy Property Bill. The fifth ordinance on the long-pending Bill lapses next week. An ordinance lapses within six weeks of a Parliament session being convened. The budget session was convened on January 31. It will be exactly six weeks from that date when Parliament meets after Holi on March 14.

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The Enemy Property Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha last year and then introduced in the Rajya Sabha where it was referred to a Select Committee. In December last year, President Pranab Mukherjee approved the re-promulgation of the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Fifth Ordinance, 2016, but questioned why he was made to sign the ordinance the fifth time. No ordinance has ever been promulgated five times.

Mukherjee has on earlier occasions, too, disapproved of the propensity of the NDA government to take the ordinance route. Thus, government sources said, the ordinance route is all but closed for the Enemy Property Bill now. Sources said Home Minister Rajnath Singh had taken up the issue with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar, but there seems to be little time to push the Bill through.

“Tomorrow is private members’ day, so how can the Bill be taken up? If anything happens, it will be on Tuesday. If the Rajya Sabha takes it up and passes it on Tuesday, and if there are amendments, it will immediately have to be sent to the Lok Sabha for passage to ensure that the ordinance holds,” said a highly-placed functionary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.

There are contentious provisions in the Bill relating to enemy property, including a retrospective clause that governments in states say will be difficult to implement. A property belonging to, held or managed on behalf of an enemy, an enemy subject or an enemy firm is described as an enemy property. There are 16,547 enemy properties worth Rs 1 lakh crore across India. The Union Home Ministry acts as the custodian of the enemy properties.

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