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Singur echo in land blow to Ambani


Allahabad High Court today partly quashed the acquisition of 2,500 acres for Anil Ambani’s jinxed Dadri power project, rekindling memories of the Singur dispute.

A high court division bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and Sudhir Agarwal quashed the land purchase by the Uttar Pradesh government in 2004 under emergency provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894.

The court noted that the state government had failed to record the objections of the farmers who had been opposing the forcible buyout. Although the Singur land dispute did not make it to court, the similarity is hard to miss.

The land had been acquired for a 7,480MW project, which the Anil Ambani group has flagged as the world’s largest gas-fired power project at a single location, when Mulayam Singh of the Samajwadi Party was the chief minister.

The verdict is being seen as a big victory for the late Prime Minister V.P. Singh who had rallied farmers in Ghaziabad in 2006 to protest against the land acquisition. The farmers had been paid about Rs 150 per square yard for fertile agricultural land.

Now, the court has directed the collector of Ghaziabad to record the complaints of the affected farmers, investigate their allegations of land acquisition under duress and hand back the land to the farmers after recovering the compensation they had received.

The judges said the land acquisition had become “impermissible” because the state government had invoked section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act which confers the right on the authorities to acquire land for a public purpose under emergency provisions.

At Singur, land had been acquired under a similar act.

They noted that the state had “never decided to acquire any land for a power project”. The notifications for the acquisition of land were based on a proposal submitted by Reliance Delhi Power Pvt Ltd, an Anil Ambani group company.

“Thus, the acquisition in question cannot be termed acquisition for public purpose,” the court said.

The Anil Ambani camp drew comfort from the fact that the court had permittedland acquisition under section 4 of the Act, which entails a public notification of the intention to acquire the land followed by an enquiry into objections, if any.

Sources said only 500 farmers were opposing the land purchase while more than 5,000 had already received compensation, again a mirror image of Singur.

They didn’t expect the farmers who had already accepted payment to return the amount. They were emphatic that the court order would not mean that the project would have to start from scratch.

“We are confident that the state government of Uttar Pradesh will take…requisite steps for land acquisition...to enable the implementation of the project,” the company said in a terse statement.

Supreme Court advocate K.T.S. Tulsi, who represented a section of the farmers, said: “We wanted to avoid a Singur-like situation as the farmers were willing to give up their life for the land.

“The court has taken note of the argument that agricultural land is a precious resource and it is not advisable to divert it for non-agricultural purposes.”

The Dadri project is central to the battle between the Ambani brothers over the supply of gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin.

The latest setback for Anil Ambani comes at a time the Supreme Court is in the final stages of hearing the dispute over pricing the gas elder brother Mukesh’s company is to supply.