NICE gets HC reprieve

 The hurdles for the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMIC) project to construct a peripheral ring road around the City have been cleared for now with a High Court Division Bench comprising Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice H Bilappa dismissing and disposing of several petitions and observing that “the project cannot be stopped or stalled due to challenging of acquisition or seeking an increase in compensation by landlords.”

In the pronouncement of judgement in 28 batches of petitions and appeals, which lasted about 30 minutes, the Bench directed that  status quo be maintained for about six weeks.

Reading out brief orders, Justice Chellur dismissed most of them as not maintainable, while a few were directed for award of compensation as per law.

In one case, a petitioner, Venkatesh, wanted his land to be acquired for the road project. Stating that his land was not acquired, while his neighbour's was acquired and even compensated for, he sought the court’s directions for acquisition of his land too.

The court said his request could be considered depending on the project’s need for land.
In another case, the denotification of land allocated to the BMIC project by the State government at Kodigehalli was quashed.

The National Highway Authority of India’s (NHAI) petition to re-acquire the land allotted to NICE on NH 4, where a truck terminus and International Exhibition Centre have come up, was dismissed.

The NHAI had challenged the single judge order that the land acquired for one project cannot be re-acquired for another project. The Bench upheld the single judge order.

Hearing one of the petitioners, R N Shetty, challenging the acquisition of his land at Chennasandra village, the court dismissed the petition saying the petitioner cannot question the acquisition of his land after consenting to part with it.

In a few other cases, including stopping of demolition of houses, the court directed that status quo be maintained, till the disposal of special leave petitions that may be filed in the Supreme Court.

Justice Chellur told the petitioners that they can file a memo to get the order copies. “It is practically impossible to provide all the orders by tomorrow,” she said and told them to file memos if they needed it on priority. “We are giving them breathing time,” she said.