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CHANDIGARH: Taking up a matter related to the acquisition of 1,400 acres of land for developing residential and commercial sectors in Gurugram by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda), the Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the state government why the matter should not be handed over to the CBI for investigation.

These oral observations came from the SC division bench comprising Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar. The bench orally asked the counsel appearing for Haryana that the state government should come clean on their stand in this matter otherwise the court will direct the matter to CBI for investigation.

During the hearing of the case, the counsel appearing for the land owners, also pointed out that a similar case is already under investigation by the CBI, wherein land in Manesar was notified under the Section 4 and when the builders purchased the same from land owners, the entire acquisition proceedings were dropped by the then state government.

The bench would now hear the matter on Wednesday. The matter is pending before the apex court in the wake of an appeal filed by the state government challenging the orders of a division bench of the Punjab and Haryana high court in January 2014, quashing a 2009 notification for acquiring 1,400 acres in eight villages around Gurgaon for developing sectors 58 to 63.

In this case, the state government had released around 95% of the acquired land to private builders and even granted licences to builders for developing housing projects. Out of the 1,400 acres, only 87 acres were left with Huda, which were proposed for providing public utilities like hospital, power station, fire station and police station for the benefit to private builders.

“The manner in which the impugned acquisition commenced with a proposal to acquire over 1,400 acres of land but culminated into the acquisition of 87 acres of land testifies that the very object of the subject acquisition was meant to achieve extraneous and alien considerations, unknown to the scheme of the land acquisition act,” division bench headed by Justice Surya Kant had observed while quashing the 2009 notification.

In its 25 page-judgment, the bench had also upheld that state acquired farmers land by giving mischievous and self-serving interpretation to the provisions of the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act so as to give undue favour to the private builder-cum-colonizer.

Leader of opposition Abhay Singh Chautala of INLD, while addressing media on the issue on Tuesday at Gurgaon, said instead of taking action against the bureaucrats involved in this matter, the present Manohar Lal Khattar government was also trying to save those involved in this illegal acquisition process.

