Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
By World Economic Forum on Flickr / Matthew Jordaan [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The  Supreme Court on Monday pulled up Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government over 1,500 crore land acquisition fraud. The court has reopened the land acquisition of 912 acres of land in Gurgaon and the CBI is now investigating the case.

CBI is now finding out whether there have been “unnatural gains” involved in the transactions. The bench consisted of Justice AK Goel and UU Lalit found that there was a “clear case of fraud of power” talking about the state high court’s decision in 2007. The land is now under the control of the Haryana Urban Development Authority. The land was acquired from Manesar, Lakhnoula, and Narangpur.

The court has granted relief to the farmers whose land was acquired and sold to builders. When the farmers moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court but their petition wasn’t given due attention. The land was acquired to build the Chaudhari Devi Lal Industrial Township. The court called the acquisition a ‘smoke screen’ where the builders sold the 400 acres of land at a price of 100 crores when the market price was 1,600 crore rupees. The middlemen got the benefit of these transactions.

The judgement was a 97-page one said that the whole matter was against public interest. The state government was directed to pay the compensation to the farmers whose land was acquired. The court said, “The fact that other acquisitions have been completed and have attained the required objective is a pointer in the direction there was nothing wrong with the initiation but somewhere along while the process was on, it was completely hijacked by vested interests. We cannot, therefore, grant mere declaration invalidating the transaction and grant relief of restoring status ante.” 2018 is truly turning out to be the year of scams and frauds, bringing bad news to businessmen and politicians alike, and maybe nobody will be spared.

By Sahitya