NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Haryana government to furnish status of agricultural land acquired for setting up of 44 special economic zones (SEZ), of which 30-odd had been notified.
Kuldeep Bishnoi, petitioner and the lone MP of Haryana Janhit Congress, through senior advocate Nidesh Gupta questioned the acquisition of huge tracts of agricultural land for setting up of SEZs and alleged that the state government used the ruse of
SEZ to acquire land and then de-notified them to allot the land to industries or create residential sectors.
A bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and S K Singh, hearing a bunch of public interest litigations questioning similar agricultural land acquisition in other states, said the petitions could be appreciated better by the high courts of the states concerned.
However, Gupta convinced the court that the SEZ policy is of national importance and an authoritative ruling from the apex court would prevent confusion, which could arise in case of conflicting opinion from the high courts.
The bench accepted the argument and took up Bishnoi's case to ask the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government to provide details of the SEZs by the next date of hearing. Seven years ago, the court had issued notices to the Centre, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP governments on the PIL alleging that the proposals to set up 60-odd SEZs in the National Capital Region were in breach of law.
Neither the Central SEZ Act nor the state legislations on special economic zones have taken into account the NCR Act, thus, rendering all of them violative of the constitutional mandate, the petition filed through Gupta stated while demanding that the land acquisitions be struck down and land be returned to farmers.
Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com