High Court justifies Singur land acquisition by WB Govt

Justifying the proposed Tata Motor’s car project the Calcutta High Court on Friday while hearing a number of petition against the process of land acquisition proclaimed that the state government’s land acquisition process was legal.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice SS Nijjar dismissed a PIL filed by Joydeep Mukherjee along with 10 others filed by different individuals and made the pronouncement that the project was legally precise.

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The state government didn’t adopt any fraudulent means and there had been ‘no colorable exercise of power’, the bench added while justifying the legality of the acquisition.

The decission came just after a week the Tata Motor displayed the world’s cheapest car ‘Nano’ at the New Delhi’s Auto Expo.

The Petition

Joydeep Mukherjee was the first person to file petition on February 2007. Since then a total of 11 Public Interest Litigations (PIL) was filed against the Singur land possession citing it as illegal. The petitioners had claimed that the state government did not fulfill the legal grades of the land acquisition act.

The court had then demanded the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government to submit all documents pertaining to legal questions including date wise account of land acquisition by the government. The court needed clarification whether all the land holders have their authentic signature in the agreement paper or not.

Petitioner had stated in their complaint that the people of the region were illiterate and government cheated them in the name of compensation. The court hence directed the administration to submit the list of farmers who were compensated and also the kind of compensation.

However, the court after studying all legalities found that there was no violation in the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the Land Acquisition (Companies) Rules, 1963.

Tata Motors was planning to bring the car into the market by October 2007 but due the controversy the project has been delayed and the government now searching for options to shift the plant to a new area.

The CPI (M) ruled West Bengal government was also criticised for taking on land under two different sections of Land Acquisition Act 1894.

Both Singur for Tata’s car plant and Nandigram, a site for a purposed SEZ project for Indonesia-based Salim Group witnessed firm protest from locals and opposition party Trinamool Congress.