The city’s largest private landlord, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co Ltd, has challenged the state’s action in waiving a social impact assessment provision over acquisition of a 10-hectare Vikhroli. plot for the bullet train project. The 534km Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor is slated to pass through Thane creek and proposed to open in December 2023.
The company sought status quo in the acquisition process, but the court didn’t grant that or any immediate relief, and posted the matter for hearing in January 2020.
The company on December 18 approached the Bombay high court with a fresh move to challenge as unconstitutional and arbitrary an amendment made by Maharashtra government to the law dealing with compensation for land acquisition.
The amendment arbitrarily allows exemption for the bullet train project an otherwise-mandatory provision of social impact assessment study for land acquisition in a public project, said Godrej. Such emergent acquisition can only be done by the Centre under a provision which requires an additional 75%compensation to be paid, it said.
The infrastructure project is within’s the Centre’s jurisdiction since it traverses two states and a Union territory, it argued.
Land acquisition for a public project has to be under the Right to Fair Compensation & Transparency in land Acquisition, Rehabilitation & Resettlement Act, 2013-a Central law introduced to make the process more participative, humane and transparent for industrialisation and infrastructure creation.
The Godrej land issue has been pending for a while. The high court had earlier asked the company, state and Centre to resolve the compensation issue after the company agreed to give an alternative plot.
On September 4, the HC observed that the parties failed to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution and said the National high Speed Rail Corporation Ltd (NHSRCL; the bullet train project’s implementer) could acquire the plot, but the company was entitled under the Act to raise objections, including on valuation. It essentially argued that the state, while being delegated powers by the Centre to acquire land, cannot then make or rely on amendments to the law.
“Where land is to be acquired for a public purpose, a Social Impact Assessment study is to be carried out by the appropriate government,” says the Act. It analyses the benefit of the project against costs, including displacement.
NHSRCL says it urgently needs the land, for which it offered Rs 572 crore. The state in October issued notifications, citing ‘public interest’. The company has challenged these notifications.
The state government claims that the plot offered by Godrej forms part of the larger 3,000 acres of land it staked claim to in a 1973 suit filed before the high court. The company disputes the state’s claim. The land title suit has documents dating back almost two centuries and is still pending trial.
