Refusing to give the Mayawati government relief on the Allahabad high court’s order quashing the acquisition of 230 hectares of fertile farmland for industrial and housing projects in Greater Noida, the Supreme Court on Monday delivered a stern warning to all state governments aga-inst “repeating” any “Nand-igram-type” incidents.
“We cannot close our eyes to what is happening... We cannot let another Nandigram happen,” said a bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and A.K. Patnaik during a short hearing on the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority’s appeal challenging the high court’s verdicts quashing the UP government order acquiring 156.3 and 73 hectares of agricultural land in Shahberi and Surajpur villages for industrial and housing projects.
Both villages are close to Bhatta-Parsaul, where the state police recently swooped on farmers demanding higher compensation. Besides GNIDA, real estate developers Supertech and Amrapali, whose projects were affected too, also moved the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court also criticised the Centre for its “lackadaisical” approach on amending the outdated Land Acquisition Act formulated in 1894, during the British Raj, terming such archaic laws as the root cause for all problems related to acquisition of land.