Anil Ambani?s Reliance Power Ltd (RPL) has moved to the Supreme Court challenging the Allahabad High Court?s verdict that had in effect cancelled the acquisition of 2,500 acres of agricultural land for the group?s Rs 25,000-crore gas-based Dadri power plant. The matter is coming up for hearing this week.
RPL (formerly known as Reliance Energy Generation Ltd) in its SLP said that the high court had erred in exercising its discretionary jurisdiction in the petitions filed by the farmers after a delay of four years and the same had put an industrial project of national importance in jeopardy.
It alleged that the petitions filed by the farmers were motivated as the same have been filed at the instance of its business rivals. The company said that the original land owners are barred by the principles of estoppel and acquiescence from challenging the acquisition as they had accepted compensation after signing voluntary agreements in 2005. The Allahabad High Court had not only asked the company to acquire land afresh and seek fresh consent of farmers for taking their land for the project, it had, also, allowed the farmers to take back their land provided they returned the compensation paid by RPL.
The high court had quashed a notification issued by the Mulayam Singh government in 2004 that used certain ?urgency? powers to acquire the land for the proposed 7,480 mw project. The court said the notification was issued bypassing a provision that was meant to invite objections from farmers According to the SLP, RPL had acquired 2,200 acres of land in 2004 for the mega power project and about 90% of the land owners had signed consent agreements under which they voluntarily accepted compensation based on prevailing market rate and had also handed over possession of their land to the state in 2004.
The UP government had executed a conveyance deed in 2005 and transferred about 2,100 acres of the acquired land to RPL for the Dadri project in in the state, it said, adding that ?the public purpose and importance of the acquisition is established from the fact that the state government itself pursuant to the power policy contributed a major amount of Rs 94.71 crore out of the total compensation of Rs 157.85 crores.?
After taking over the possession, RPL had received several statutory and regulatory approvals both from the state government and the Centre signifying support to the project.