NEW DELHI: Severely indicting Haryana’s previous Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government for a Rs 1,500 crore land acquisition fraud, the Supreme Court on Monday restored the scrapped acquisition of 688 acres of land in Gurgaon and asked the CBI to get to the bottom of the fiddle.

The SC decision to revive the acquisition will deprive unscrupulous builders, who acted in concert with government functionaries, of the fruits of their corruption.

The case involved the state industries department issuing a notification about the government’s decision to acquire land in Gurgaon, triggering distress sale to builders who promptly stepped in to offer rates higher than what the farmers would have got as compensation. Shortly afterwards, however, the notification was withdrawn, leaving the builders to amass a fortune. The CBI has already chargesheeted Hooda in the case, and the SC order will strengthen the charge of wrongdoing.

On August 27, 2004, the state industries department notified its decision to acquire land in Manesar, Lakhounla and Naurangpur in Gurgaon district to set up Chaudhari Devi Lal Industrial Township . Using this ‘smoke screen’, builders coerced land owners to sell 400 acres at a throwaway price of Rs 100 crore against a market price of Rs 1,600 crore.

Three years later, when the land had been taken over by builders, the Hooda government suddenly dropped acquisition proceedings to allow realtors to become owners of vast tracts of land to execute profitable housing and other projects. The SC quoted the CBI’s report, which said, “Some politicians who were also important functionaries of state government, government officers and their agents caused a wrongful loss of Rs 1,500 crore to land owners of Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhounla and corresponding gains to themselves.”

Finding ‘middlemen’ getting a windfall from the fraud, a bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit said, “The CBI may do well to unravel the truth. In any case, such hefty sums which were made over to ‘middlemen’ cannot be said to be rightfully earned by and belonging to them... In our view, this money rightfully belongs to the state and none other. We direct the authorities of the state as well as the central government to reach the depths of such transactions and recover every single pie and make it over to the state government. A complete investigation in the transactions, including unearthing unnatural gains received by ‘middlemen’, shall be undertaken by the CBI.”

The bench came down heavily on the builder-Hooda government nexus and ordered that the 688 acres of land, which was notified to be acquired but was not, is now deemed to have been acquired by the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC) and Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) and the land would now vest in them instead of the builders.

Writing the 97-page judgment for the bench throwing light on every aspect of the massive fraud and saying that ‘public interest’ was murdered, Justice Lalit said the land transferred to builders between August 27, 2004 and January 29, 2010, along with the licences granted to builders, would now vest with HSIDC and HUDA. The builders will get interest-free refund from the government at the rate at which they had purchased the land from the farmers, and the amount they had invested to develop the land, the bench said.

The land owners who lost land would be entitled to initiate proceedings for enhanced compensation, that is over and above the price for which they had sold their land to builders. If the trial court allows them additional compensation that would be paid by the state government, it said.

If the builder has completed construction on the land so acquired by them, the plots or apartments shall be made over to the respective claimants after due verification, it said. However, it put a caveat on the unsold flats and plots, and said, “The remaining area or apartments will be completely at the disposal of HUDA or HSIDC, as the case may be, which shall be free and competent to dispose of the same in accordance with prevailing policy and procedure.”



In Video: Manesar land scam: SC sets aside Hooda govt’s decision to drop proceedings against private builders