India News | Guj HC Questions State Govt over Anti-land Grabbing Law Use

Ahmedabad, Aug 24 (PTI) The Gujarat High Court questioned the state government on why the newly-enacted anti-land grabbing law had not been invoked against those encroaching government land while it has been done in the case of disputes concerning private properties.

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Justice Paresh Upadhyay made the observations on Monday while hearing a a set of petitions challenging the Amreli district magistrate's order invoking Prevention of Anti-Social Activities (PASA) against people who had been named in FIRs lodged under the newly-enacted Gujarat Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2020 for erecting homes on private property.

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“The enthusiasm on the part of the district magistrate to enter into private land disputes, whether permissible or not is a different thing, but a fraction thereof is applied to encroachment on government land, then certainly that would be the purpose for which (law) is made,” observed Justice Upadhyay.

“We have seen in newspapers that with great pride you are saying we have registered x number of FIRs for land grabbing. Should I ask, how much is private land grabbing and how much government land grabbing? There is no answer to this,” the judge further said.

The court has reserved its order on the four petitions from the accused from Amreli.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)