New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court on Friday questioned the land allotted to Anil Ambani’s group for a gas-based thermal power plant at Dadri in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh.
Anil’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) was given the 25,000-acre land in 2004 when the Samajwadi Party, headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, was in power in Uttar Pradesh.
Late prime minister V P Singh and 47 others, including many farmers in Dadri, had challenged the allotment of land for the project.
The land was acquired under an urgency clause by the Mulayam Singh government--that clause has now been set aside by the court.
The court has said farmers who object to the project can return the compensation and get back their land.
Speaking to the media, J P Chalasani of Reliance Power says that the company is confident that the Dadri project will be set up with the help of the Uttar Pradesh government.
"We are confident that the State Government of Uttar Pradesh will expeditiously take requisite steps of land acquisition at the earliest to enable the implementation of the project," he said.
The counsel for farmers in Dadri, Ashish Pratap Singh says, "The procedure adopted for land acquisition had several short comings. Norms were violated to benefit a particular private company. The farmers want their land back and they have been fighting for this for a very long time now. This is their fundamental right as well as their statutory right that the state, before acquiring any land, shall invite their objections. The right to file an objection was taken away by means of governance powers under section 17(1) of the land acquisition act. Their land was directly acquired and transferred to a private company."
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