Supreme Court notice to Centre, Guj on plea against land acquisition for Bullet train project

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a plea against the acquisition of land for construction and implementation of the 508-km long bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose issued notice to the Centre, Gujarat government and National High-Speed Rail Corporation Ltd, among others on a petition filed by Jigrabhai Amratbhai Patel and others.

The petitioners led by senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Sanjay Parikh and advocate Kamini Jaiswal, appearing for the affected farmers and landowners, challenged the validity of the Gujarat High Court's judgement of September 19, 2019, dismissing their plea.

The top court sought response from the authorities in the matter and posted it for consideration on March 20.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta defended the HC's judgement, which had rejected the batch of petitions, for halting the land acquisition proceedings for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Project.

The petitioners sought a direction, among others, for revision and updation of the market value of land as per the statutory norms and rules and the mandate of Section 26 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. They also contended the Gujarat government had in 2016 amended the principal law of 2013 completely doing away with the Social Impact Assessment and Consent Clause.

The Mumbai Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Project is being carried out by the Union Government in collaboration with the Japan government.