In big relief for Adani Ports, the Supreme Court today paused a Gujarat High Court order that had asked the state government to recover 108 hectares of grazing land that had been allotted to the ports company. This land is located near Mundra port in Kachchh district.
The Supreme Court has sought the Gujarat government’s reply on the matter.
The matter goes back to 2005 when the 108 hectares was allotted to Adani Ports. In 2010, when Adani Ports & SEZ started fencing the land, residents of Navinal village there approached the high court with a Public Interest Litigation and challenged the allotment of 231 hectares of grazing land to Adani Ports.
They argued that the village was facing a shortage of grazing land and this allotment would leave them with only 45 acres.
In 2014, the court disposed of the matter after the state government said that an order granting 387 hectares of government land for grazing had been passed.
When that did not happen, a contempt petition was filed. In 2015, the state government filed a review petition and told the court that only 17 hectares are available to be allocated to the village panchayat. The state government proposed that it may allocate the remaining land about 7 kilometres away. The villagers rejected this, contending that it’s too far for cattle to graze.
In April this year, the court asked a senior revenue official to come up with a solution. The official responded that the state government had decided to take back nearly 108 hectares — 266 acres — of land that had been allocated to Adani Ports in 2005.
The revenue department said the state will “replenish” the villagers by adding government land to the tract taken back from Adani Power. The High Court then asked the state government to implement this.
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