BHUBANESWAR: The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld an Orissa high court order of November 2010 and ruled that acquisition of more than 8,000-acre land for Vedanta Group’s proposed university project along Puri-Konark Marine Drive was illegal.
Dismissing an appeal by Vedanta Group controlled Anil Agarwal Foundation against the HC order, the bench of justices M R Shah and Krishna Murarai observed “non-application of mind” in the acquisition by the state government and “undue favours” shown to the company.
“It is not appreciable why the government offered such an undue favour in favour of one trust/ company. Thus, the entire acquisition proceedings and the benefits, which were proposed by the state government were vitiated by favouritism and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before the law),” the bench said in the order.
The apex court also imposed Rs 5 lakh as litigation cost on the foundation and asked it to deposit the amount with the SC registrar within six weeks.
The SC said the HC was justified in setting aside the entire acquisition proceedings, which has been vitiated by non-compliance of the statutory provisions and vitiated by mala fides.
The apex court pointed out the state government had ignored environmental aspects since two rivers ‘Nuanai’ and ‘Nala’ flow in the acquired land and Balukhand wildlife sanctuary was located near it. Control of the river by the company would violate the Doctrine of Public Trust, the court said.
The court also said the government genuineness of the company’s demand for huge land parcel for building such a campus as one of world’s largest, Stanford University
Pointing out that the government is holding a public trust and has to deal with the lands belonging to private landowners, more particularly, agricultural landowners in accordance with law, the court said the Odisha government could have found out if any other public trusts or companies, were interested in establishing such university instead of dealing with just one company. Even no proper inquiry seems to have been initiated by the Government / Collector while considering the proposal by the beneficiary company.
The court said though the company had initially sought 15,000 acres, it reduced the requirement to 3837 acres to exclude land losers who opposed it. This shows its initial proposal was for exaggerated demand. “This was mala fide intention on the part of the foundation,” it said.
In 2006, the Vedanta Group had sought land promising a world-class university with an investment of Rs 15,000 crore. Around 8000 acres belonging to the private landowners were acquired or were in the process of being acquired. The state government had handed over another 495 acres of land belonging to the state government. While hearing a bunch of petitions by the land losers, the HC in 2010 had quashed the procedure to acquire land for the project and asked the foundation to return the already acquired land.
