The Gujarat government on Friday told the High Court that it would take back 108 acres of gauchar, or grazing, land in Kutch district from an Adani Group company and return it to villagers for grazing animals, reported PTI.
The land is part of 231 hectares near the Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone’s Mundra port that were handed over to the company in 2005.
One hectare is equal to about 2.5 acres.
The state government’s decision to restore the land as a community resource comes after a 13-year legal battle by the residents of Navinal panchayat.
The villagers had reportedly discovered in 2010 that their lands had been handed over to the Adani Group. Their plea contended that the allotment was illegal and had severely shrunk the area available to them for grazing cattle.
The Supreme Court, in cases such as Jagpal Singh & Ors vs State Of Punjab & Ors (2011), has passed orders to protect communities’ rights over common-use lands.
The villagers said that they had been left with just 45 hectares of grazing land after the allotment to Adani Ports, down from 276 hectares earlier.
In 2014, after the deputy collector had permitted the allottment of 387 hectares of grazing land for the villagers, the High Court dismissed their plea. When the land was not given to them, the villagers filed a contempt petition.
The Gujarat government eventually told the court that only 17 hectares of gauchar land were available in the area. It proposed to instead give the villagers a land parcel around 7 kilometres away from Navinal panchayat.
Accepting the villagers’ argument that it would not be possible for them to transport cattle over such a long distance, the court in April told the state government to come up with a solution.
On Friday, the additional chief secretary of the revenue department told the High Court that the 108 hectares would be retrieved from the Adani Group company and supplemented with 21 hectares of government land.
In all, 129 hectares of grazing land is set to be returned to the villagers.
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