The Jharkhand assembly on Wednesday once again passed a bill that proposes to fix land records of 1932 as the basis for domicile in the state which is a mandatory eligibility to apply for Class III and Class IV government jobs.

Chief minister Hemant Soren moved the bill for passage while ignoring the amendments suggested by the Raj Bhavan, who has previously returned the legislation twice for reconsideration.

“We don’t think there is any need to make any amendment in the bill. I request the House to pass this unanimously,” Soren said in the assembly. He added that the bill represents the “ethos” of Jharkhand.

The bill, titled ‘Jharkhand definition of local persons and for extending the consequential, social, cultural and other benefits to such local persons Bill, 2022’, colloquially known as the 1932 Khatiyan bill, was first passed by the assembly on November 11 last year.

As per the bill, people who have their names or their ancestors’ name in the khatiyan (land records) of 1932 or before will be considered as a local inhabitant of Jharkhand, and only such people will be eligible for Class III and Class IV jobs in the state.

The bill was, however, returned twice by the governor since then for reconsideration, the last being on December 2, when governor CP Radhakrishnan also suggested some amendments. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) government, however, refused to make any changes and got the same bill passed again on Wednesday.

According to the Constitution, if a bill is sent to the governor after being passed by the House for a second time, the governor is bound to give his assent to the legislation.