Chandigarh, June 15
Two separate special leave petitions (SLPs) have been filed in the Supreme Court praying to stay the operation and effect of the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s judgement pertaining to “setting aside the notifications acquiring over 10,500 acres of land in 29 villages to develop a new township of Anandgarh”.

On March 28, a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had quashed the notifications issued by the Punjab Government because the “site was not selected in accordance with the law”.

Official sources said today that one SLP had been filed by the state government and the other by the New Town Planning and Development Authority for Anandgarh through its Chief Administrator.

Appealing for interim relief, the Supreme Court has been requested to “stay the operation and effect of the impugned judgement and order dated March 28,2001, passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in CWP numbers 7291, 8798, 9047, 9143 and 17638 of 2000. The court has been further requested to grant interim ex-parte stay in terms of the prayer and to also allow to carry on the land acquisition process.

While requesting for interim relief, it has been stated in the SLPs that the decision to set up the new town of Anandgarh was taken by the Punjab Government in the larger public interest. If the petitioner is forced at this stage to start afresh in accordance with the provisions of the Town Planning Act, the planning and development of the new town cannot be completed for a long time during which private speculators will frustrate the objective of planned development of the periphery of Chandigarh.

In a bid to justify the setting up of the new town of Anandgarh on the periphery of Chandigarh, the SLPs say that “ it will prevent the unlawful encroachments by private speculators and violation of the Periphery Act and the consequent haphazard and chaotic growth in the periphery of Chandigarh”.

It further says that Anandgarh will be an ultra-modern, futuristic city which will permit the state of Punjab to revitalise its economy by providing a showcase for information technology and other high-tech industries. The project will be environmentally and ecologically sound in-so-far as it will preserve the choes running through the area and more than 20,000 acres of land to the north-east of Chandigarh will be acquired and afforestation measures undertaken.

The land under acquisition is largely not cultivable and the villagers who own the land are more than satisfied with the compensation being offered in the light of the fact that the notifications under section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act have been challenged by only nine persons owning 54 acres of land out of the 30,000 inhabitants who own the total land, approximately 10,000 acres, which was under acquisition, say the SLPs.

It further says that the high court has failed to appreciate that the procedure for the site selection for a new town under Section 56 read with section 14( 2) of the Town Planning Act is simply inapplicable to the periphery of Chandigarh because the legislature itself had selected the periphery for the expansion of Chandigarh in 1952.