The Supreme Court on Thursday snubbed the Gujarat Government and Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s trusted aide Anandiben Patel, who as Revenue Minister in year 2008 “circumvented” the law to favour allotment of a huge agricultural plot to an industrial house.
A bench of Justices Hl Gokhale and J Chelameswar partly allowed a PIl, filed by one Dipak Babaria, questioning the decision of the Collector of Kutch and Revenue Ministry to hand over land measuring up to 40 acres to a private entity for setting up of an industrial plant. The PIl found this action to be illegal as under Section 89A of the Gujarat Tenancy Act, the land being agricultural in nature could not be transferred from one industrial house to another.
The land in dispute that fell in Kutch was earlier sold to one Indigold Refinery in 2003. As the said company failed to develop the land, in 2008, the same portion of land was sold to Alumina Refinery with which state-owned Gujarat Mining Development Corporation formed a JV with 26 per cent stake to start a bauxite-ore based industry.
Deprecating the manner in which the Revenue Minister overruled objections put by officers in the department and “failed to pay respect” to the mandate of the law laid down by legislature, the bench struck down the decision as arbitrary and bad in law. It, however, permitted Alumina Refinery to retain land and continue with the project provided it paid the differential amount of Rs3.15 crore to State within three months. This was done with an aim to promote industrialisation of Kutch.
“Development should not be measured merely in terms of growth of gross domestic product, but it should be in terms of utility to the community and the society in general,” the court observed.