Patna: Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's dream project of building a wagon-repair workshop in Bihar's Saran district has run into trouble after the Patna High Court issued an order against forcefully displacing owners of land on which the project is proposed.
A division bench comprising Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Rekha Kumari has directed authorities responsible for land acquisition not to use force to displace the owners till further orders, court officials said yesterday.
The court order, considered the first of its kind in Bihar, was in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Bhumi Bachao Kisan Sangarsh Samiti, a farmers' organisation formed to prevent the seizure of agricultural land in Sonepur, Saran, some 50 km from Patna.
The order assumes significance as it comes in the backdrop of police firing on protesting farmers in neighbouring West Bengal's Nandigram over land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ). The firing had claimed 14 lives.
Report sought
The court also asked the railway authorities to submit a report within four weeks on the process by which the land in question was selected for acquisition.
Lalu Prasad, who represents Saran in the Lok Sabha, had announced the setting up of the wagon workshop soon after becoming railway minister. Over 100 acres of mostly fertile agricultural land was identified for the purpose in 2005.
According to the petition, the area falls in four villages - Ismailchak, Govindpur, Chakapsaid and Chitranjanpur - under Sonepur block, where villagers are not inclined to part with their land.
The PIL described the railways' decision to acquire land by displacing villagers as unreasonable, arbitrary and unconstitutional.
"The railways had selected land belonging to marginal farmers, putting them at risk of being rendered landless labourers without any means of livelihood," the petition said. It further said that the state government had recommended the railway ministry to set up any new project at Garhara in Begusarai district where over 2,000 acres of land lay vacant and unused.
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