The News
Supreme Court has rejected the Mukesh Ambani-promoted Mumbai SEZ plea for staying the land acquisition process for its project in Raigad in Maharashtra. One cannot say that this was not expected news. It was not possible that the SC would bend the rules for Mukesh Ambani, just because he was unable to get the required land.
This SEZ had a requirement of 10,000 hectares of land and Mukesh Ambani was looking at an investment of Rs.1 lakh crore and around 20lakh jobs were to get created. But the biggest problem, which almost all the SEZs face today, is of land acquisition. Last year notices, saying the Government intended acquiring land for the SEZ, were issued to farmers in 45 villages in three talukas of Raigad district. But 95% of the farmers were not ready to give up their land and there were major protests and agitations. Due to this, the land acquisition just did not happen. Under the Act, land acquisition had to be completed a year after notices under Section 4, and that deadline was June 8th.
Mukesh Ambani had filed a plea first with the High Court, asking for speedy completion of its SEZ land acquisition process by the collector at Raigad. The company had contended that a delay in land acquisition further than June 8 would result in the lapse of the entire process under the Land Acquisition Act 1894.
The HC rejected the plea and asked the company to move the Supreme Court, where a number of other petitions related to the Mumbai SEZ are already pending. And now this plea has been rejected by the SC.
So what does this rejection mean?
If the acquisition is not completed by June 8, the entire process would lapse under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. And it seems unlikely that Mukesh Ambani would be able to get 10,000 hectares by June 8th. So this means, that the entire process would have be initiated all over again and this would mean a delay of another two years.
Maharashtra has a total of 131 Special Economic Zones in the pipeline; and the biggies amongst them are: Mumbai SEZ of Mukesh Ambani at Raigad; Navi Mumbai SEZ which is once again of Mukesh Ambani and it requires 2180 hectares of land; then there is the SEZ of Indiabulls at Raigad and its requirement is for 2,500 hectares; Videocon is also setting up a SEZ in Pune and it is to be spread over 1000 hectares and then there is the SEZ of Essel Infrastructure which is setting up its SEZ in Gorai and requires 358 hectares.
Many of these companies, had followed Mukesh Ambani’s formula of trying to acquire land directly from the farmers but that too does not seem to have worked. Getting financial closures is easy but getting land has become virtually impossible.
Land acquisition for SEZs has been mired in controversies. In fact, in some states, it has become an election issue. At some places, locals rose in protest against what they termed as either forceful acquisition or exploitation by offering much lower compensation. The role of state governments in land acquisition also came under fire. In northern