Brazil's Congress on Thursday overturned a presidential veto that had struck down the core of a bill to limit Indigenous land claims, setting up a likely clash at the Supreme Court, Paralel.Az reports citing Reuters.

Indigenous groups had supported President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's veto, while the bill had the backing of the powerful farm lobby.

In a joint session of both chambers, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to annul Lula's veto of a policy limiting claims to ancestral lands where Indigenous people lived in 1988.

The issue is expected to be decided by the Supreme Court, which ruled in September that the deadline was unconstitutional.

Lula created the first Ministry of Indigenous Peoples when he took office in January and has vowed to recognize pending land claims. In October he vetoed the core of the bill, a move seen as a major victory for the country's 1.6 million Indigenous people. Many of them have struggled to defend land rights threatened by the advance of Brazil's agricultural frontier into the Amazon region.

The number of land conflicts has increased as Brazil's farm sector has boomed in recent decades into a global powerhouse. Indigenous communities across the country claim land that farmers have settled and developed, in some cases for decades.

The core of the bill that Lula had vetoed sought to establish in law a cut-off date for new reservations on lands where Indigenous people did not live on Oct. 5, 1988, when Brazil's Constitution was enacted.