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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

SC poser to states on thousands of hectares

-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today issued notices to the Centre and seven states, including Bengal, on a plea for return of 45,782 hectares of agricultural land acquired from farmers in the name of creating special economic zones (SEZs) but allegedly diverted by the promoters for other purposes.

The petition filed through the SEZ Farmers' Protection Welfare Association of Andhra Pradesh seeks the return of unused land to the farmers and a CBI inquiry into the alleged diversion.

Senior counsel Colin Gonzalves, who appeared for the association, told a bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and L. Nageswara Rao that such acquisition over the past decade had resulted in severe livelihood crisis, mass migration, fodder crisis for cattle, increased debt burden on farmers and even suicides.

"The permit-holder (promoter) of SEZ has committed several illegalities to procure land with the active support of state officials and mortgaged the land to banks (and) subsequently the loan money has been diverted for other purposes," Gonzalves said.

Besides the Centre and Bengal, the court issued notices to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Punjab. Though the petition says SEZ land was illegally diverted in all 20 states, it has listed only the seven as respondents.

The petition, filed through counsel Sravan Kumar, extensively cites CAG findings of 2015 and trashes the SEZ policy as a means to make a fast buck. This, the plea says, has been done by taking over the land of the poor and giving it to developers who have taken loans against the land or mortgaged it or have sold it at the higher rates or converted the plots into real estate.

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