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Grounded

The ambitious Anandgarh township proposal stirs another round of controversy as a high court order foils the Punjab Government's plans of acquiring land for the project. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Ramesh Vinayak reports.

For the controversial Anandgarh project, entailing the Punjab Government's plans to set up an ultramodern town near Chandigarh, March 28 was a day of tragic and ironic coincidence. Hours after the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the state Government's notification for acquiring 10,500 acres of land for the project, Satnam Singh, an architect who was recently chosen to design Anandgarh, died after a brief illness.

In a stinging 77-page judgement on a bunch of public petitions opposing the project, a division bench comprising Justice Jawahar Lal Gupra and Justice N.K. Sud termed the selection of the site for the proposed town as improper and the land acquisition notices illegal.

Only two days earlier, the state Cabinet had decided to release Rs 30 crore for the land acquisition. In the first phase, 10,500 acres of land located in north west Chandigarh were to be acquired, displacing 30,000 people of 29 villages. Another 4,500 acres of seven villages were to have been acquired in the
second phase.

An embarrassed Parkash Singh Badal Government sought to downplay the implications of the court judgement by declaring that it would move a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court. For thousands of villagers, mostly small farmers who were opposed to the project, the court ruling came as a reprieve from an impending displacement. It has stopped the government bulldozers, but our battle is still not over, says Jasbir Singh, general secretary of the Anandgarh Hatao Sangarsh Samiti, a platform that spearheaded a campaign against the project.

When Punjab Chief Minister Badal announced the plan to set up Anandgarh as part of the tercentenary celebrations of the Khalsa panth in April 1999, the new town was proposed to be located in the barren stretches between Anandpur Sahib and Kirit Sahib. Subsequently, however, the Government zeroed in on an inhabited site adjacent to Chandigarh. Touted as world-class futuristic city with 2 lakh upmarket inhabitants, Anandgarh was proposed to be a counter magnet to the population pressure on the City Beautiful, which though originally built for a population of five lakh is now bursting at the seams.

Opposition from the villagers apart, what lent a political angle to the controversial project was the fact that Badal, when out of power in 1995, had vociferously opposed the Congress government's proposal to carve out a new city called New Chandigarh at roughly the same location as the proposed Anandgarh. Badal then had espoused the farmers' fears of displacement, forcing the then Beant Singh regime to abandon the project.

Now, it was the turn of the opposition Congress to whip up an agitation against Anandgarh. Even the high court had commented on Badal's turnaround, terming Anandgarh as merely old wine in a new bottle. Badal's aides are at pains to explain that the new town was to have been set up close to Anandpur Sahib, doubts abound on the real motive behind the selection of site so close to Chandigarh. Project officials insist that that is the only site which can generate demand and resources for building a new city.

Villagers allege that the new site had found favour with Badal and a powerful lobby of bureaucracy because massive chunks of barren and agricultural land owned by several ruling party politicians and bureaucrats figured in the Anandgarh master plan. Soon after Badal's proposal on the new city, several influential figures had gone on a land-buying spree in the vicinity of Chandigarh at cheap rates.

With the Government doling out a hefty compensation--as high as Rs 7 lakh per acre--for the land to be acquired for the project, the windfall of profit for the recent buyers was obvious. A section of the politicians and bureaucrats had influenced the site selection to make a killing, says Jagmohan Singh Kang, former revenue minister and senior Congress leader, representing the area falling under the Anandgarh project. While officials insist that only 116 acres of the land under the new project was owned by VIPs, there are reports about how the actual land with VIP owners was much more and acquired through benami transactions. The villagers who had sold their land for a song felt cheated, says Rajinder Singh of Ratwara village falling under the project.

An unruffled Badal Government which had been pushing the project, had even brushed aside the suggestion by Union Urban Development Minister Jagmohan for reconsidering the project by an independent expert committee. Jagmohan's concerns stemmed from the fact that Anandgarh would have amounted to tinkering with the Chandigarh Periphery Act which prohibits any building activity around the capital city. Even the Union Defence Ministry had voiced its reservations about the new city coming up as it was close to one of its strategic air-defence missile bases.

When the authorities stream-rolled the protests and issued the land acquisition notice, the aggrieved villagers, mostly small farmers, took their battle to the court. The court found enough loopholes, both legal and procedural, in the execution of the project by the state government which had circumvented or bypassed its own statues on urban development. The court raised objections to the site selection, citing adverse effects on the environment. Man cannot continue to pick nature's pocket. He cannot raise multistoreyed monsters of steel and cement at every place, the judgement noted.

The court held that the Anandgarh master plan was a violation
of the Chandigarh Periphery Act, and that the state Government had proceeded to acquire land without obtaining permission from the competent authority under the provisions of the Punjab New Capital (Periphery) Control Act,1952. Also, the court maintained that the project authorities had glossed over the mandatory
legal provision--in the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995--for the constitution of a board of experts. It dismissed the Government's plea that the provision was bypassed to cut delays. The courts cannot allow the time taken in complying with the provisions to become the graveyard of good laws or people's rights, the judges noted.

The state Government also failed to convince the court about the financial viability of the project which cost Rs 1,000 crore for land acquisition alone. Although the land-acquisition notice has been annulled, the Badal government is trying its best to put the project back on the rails. Besides its plans to move an SLP in the apex court, it has also voiced its intention of complying with the legal objections pointed out by the lower court. The project is definitely on, clarifies Verma, executive director of Anandgarh project. The Government cannot afford to back off at this stage. The battle over Anandgarh, it appears, is far from over.

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