Supreme Court gives big relief to Adani Ports in land case in Gujarat

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed a Gujarat High Court order that had asked the state government to recover 108 hectares of land that had been allotted to Adani Ports and SEZ.

A bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan passed the order in an appeal filed by Adani Ports against the recovery of around 108 hectares of land by the Gujarat government.

The Supreme Court has now sought the Gujarat government's reply on the matter.

This land is located near Mundra port in Kachchh district. The matter goes back to 2005 when the 108 hectares were allotted to Adani Ports. In 2010, when Adani Ports started fencing the land, residents of Navinal village there approached the high court with a public interest litigation (PIL) and challenged the allotment of 231 hectares of grazing land to Adani Ports. They argued that the village was facing a shortage of grazing land and this allotment would leave them with only 45 acres.

In 2014, the court disposed of the matter after the state government said that an order granting 387 hectares of government land for grazing had been passed.

In 2015, the state government filed a review petition and told the court that only 17 hectares were available to be allocated to the village panchayat. It proposed that it may allocate the remaining land about 7 kilometres away. The villagers rejected this, contending that it was too far for cattle to graze. In April this year, the court asked a senior revenue official to come up with a solution. The official responded that the state government had decided to take back nearly 108 hectares of land that had been allocated to Adani Ports in 2005.