Land for SEZs: SC seeks reply from TN

A bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justices DY Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao issued notice to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab, on the  PIL which alleged that almost 80 per cent of the land acquired for the SEZs were lying  unused. The plea alleged that in last five years alone, 4,842.38 hectares of land was acquired for various SEZs and only 362 hectares were utilised, leaving around 4,480 hectares unused. 

Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves and lawyer Sravan Kumar, appearing for ‘SEZ Farmers Protection, Welfare Association’, referred to a CAG report of 2012-13 and said not only have the farmers been deprived of their land, but also consequential benefits like employment generation and industrialisation of the acquired areas have not taken place. Some companies, for whose SEZs the plots of land were acquired, raised loans by mortgaging the land documents as collateral securities with banks, but strangely did not use the loan money to develop these SEZs, the PIL said. “Issue writ or direction directing investigation under the supervision of this court by the Central Bureau of Investigation on violations, diversion of loan money obtained by SEZ holders against the SEZ rules,” it said.

The farmers’ body also sought intiation of civil and criminal proceedings against the holders of land, meant for SEZs, for “not performing the obligatory duty under the contract resulting to unemployment, wastage of natural resources, causing loss to food security”. Besides returning ‘vacant, unused land to farmers’, the plea also sought declaring of the land acquisition as ‘unconstitutional’, being violative of fundamental right to life and equality on the ground that they have caused ‘joblessness to the farmers, agricultural labour’.