Tehelka: New Delhi: Friday, June 29, 2012.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday ruled out a petition filed by the villagers of Nagri, a village at the outskirts of Ranchi, to stop the construction work of two premium central educational institutes, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and National University for Research and Study of Law (NUSRL) on 227 acres of fertile farmland.
The apex court on Thursday dismissed the petition by saying that the land was acquired 50 years ago and it’s useless to reopen the case. The SC while giving the verdict did not take into consideration all the irregularities that exist regarding the acquisition.
The villagers alleged that the acquisition never took place and they did not receive any compensation. A Right to information (RTI) application filed by the villagers had revealed that in 1957 the then unified Bihar government had acquired land and given a total compensation of Rs 1,55,147.88 to 153 families. Of these 153 families, 25 took the compensation at a rate of Rs 2,700 per acre. The remaining families refused to let go of their land and declined the compensation offered. The money went back to the government treasury the same year. After almost 60 years, the same land is priced at Rs 1.5 crore per acre, which means the entire land is priced at almost Rs 350 crore.
Now after the SC verdict, the situation in Nagri is tense as the monsoon has already arrived and the villagers have started tilling some stretches of the disputed land and sowing the paddy seeds as the kharif crop, the biggest harvest of the year.
“For the people of Nagri, it’s an all out war now,” says Dayamani Barla, a tribal activist, who has been leading the Nagri land movement since it began in 2011. “This land is the only source of livelihood for the 500 families of Nagri and this judgment of the SC will cause extreme reaction from the villagers as the people are living on the edge,” she said.
“The verdict today (Thursday) may cause an uprising among the villagers,” suspects lawyer Rajiv Kumar, a Ranchi High Cort lawyer, who has been fighting the case for the villagers. The surrounding 35 villages have joined Nagri on their fight to reclaim their land. All these 35 villages are under threat of land acquisition, as this part of Ranchi has been considered for the Greater Ranchi Development Project, which means the tribal land will be acquired for the expansion of the urban area of the capital city.
“This land can never be acquired for any purpose other than farming because this land comes under the purview of the Fifth Schedule, according to which no farming land can be used for non farming purpose,” said Kumar.
Legal experts doubt the motivation of the verdict. A practising lawyer at the Ranchi High Court, on condition of anonymity, said that the SC verdict seemed odd as they didn’t cite any legal reason. There is a suspicion that since a national law university has its stake in that land SC took a lenient stand in favour of the government and the acquisition.
Soumik Mukherjee is a Photo Correspondent with Tehelka.
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