Maya village petition goes to larger bench

The Bench had already referred the land acquisition issues pertaining to nearly a dozen villages and accounting for more than 3,310 hectares to a three-judge bench in its order on July 26.

Besides Badalpur,some of the similar petitions of other villages which were referred to the larger Bench on Friday were from Itehda and Suthiyana. While land acquisition of nearly 150 hectares in Itehda has been challenged,a few petitioners from the same village had recently approached the High Court challenging the acquisition. At least three villagers from Suthiyana too had approached the court two days ago on the same issue.

In their petition related to Badalpur,the petitioners,apart from challenging the use of urgency clause in government’s order of acquisition of land,have also accused the administration of favouring nearly a dozen tenure holders by giving them prime land in lieu of acquisition,while igorning the others. Those who were given land were also allowed to sell the same.

Earlier,on July 26,the Division Bench referred the matter to a three-judge Bench after it was pointed out by the state government that another Bench of the same court had upheld land acquisition in Patwari village using the urgency clause in 2008.

A Bench headed by Justice Sunil Ambwani had cancelled acquisition of 589 ha of land in Patwari village on July 19,leading to a situation where two benches of the same court had given contradicting verdicts.