Lalu Prasad

Lucknow, June 11: A sudden turnaround by the Mayavati government has cast a cloud on Lalu Prasad’s dream railway coach project in Sonia Gandhi’s constituency, Rae Bareli.

The plot earmarked by the railways, originally belonging to the agriculture department, has been registered as gram sabha land, which cannot be used for industrial or commercial purposes unless so decreed by the district magistrate. Even then, it lends itself to legal scrutiny, as had happened in the case of Amitabh Bachchan. Last year, the actor had to surrender a plot in Barabanki, which was registered as gram sabha land, after much legal wrangling.

The railway minister had, on February 13 last year, announced that a new coach factory, the country’s third, would come up at Lalganj in Rae Bareli. The ministry identified a plot of 542 hectares (around 1,340 acres) of farmland belonging to the agriculture department for the project.

In April 2007, the railways submitted the proposal for acquisition of land in Beswara village. The government, sources said, fixed a price of Rs 1.61 crore for the plot.

But in November, the government did a U-turn and said the land could not be handed over as it was being used for “experimental farming”.

The agriculture department said farmland of the department cannot be utilised for any purpose other than scientific use. “This is an agro-lab for the agriculture department,” said an official.

Last month, Uttar Pradesh’s principal secretary, revenue, Balbinder Kumar, issued an order dated May 30 (no. 994/AK-1/2008-5-1-19), directing his department to register the plot as gram sabha land.

Sonia Gandhi

If any plot is marked as gram sabha land, it means it has been set aside specifically to cater to the needs of a village or a cluster of villages. The land can be used as a burial ground, community playground or as a place for panchayat meetings. Often poor landless villagers are allowed to settle on such land.

No one could, however, explain the hasty turnaround of the government. Revenue department officials were tight-lipped. “It is perhaps politics which we don’t want to go into,” said an official. “The issue is very sensitive.”

All that Rae Bareli district magistrate Santosh Srivastava was willing to say was that the agriculture department had refused to hand over the land to the railways. “It was farmland and it could not have been given to the railways legally,” argued a law officer.

Sources said the decision smacked of political stonewalling because the revenue department had earlier allowed such land to be acquired for special economic zones. Only the plot earmarked by the railways was transferred as gram sabha land.

Railway sources said the government may have taken the decision to get a bigger revenue. “We guess we will have to pay slightly more — Rs 2.2 crore instead of Rs 1.61 crore — than what was fixed earlier,” said a railway official.

District magistrate Srivastava has his own explanation. He says it would be easier for him to hand over gram sabha land to the railways.

The legal department of Northern Railway said the plot could be acquired with the help of the district magistrate, who is the sole custodian of gram sabha land. He is authorised to allocate the land for any public interest project. But the department fears the process would involve inordinate delay and may be open to litigation.

Amitabh

Legal experts said the transfer might not be that easy as it risks being challenged in court, as had happened with Bachchan.

S.K. Tripathi, an advocate who fought in the Bachchan case for the Barabanki gram sabha, said: “The railways is going to set up an industry. For an industrial project, gram sabha land cannot be taken over like this. This land is meant for the welfare of the poor in villages.”

Adds high court advocate Manoj Singh: “If the district magistrate gives it away on lease for any purpose other than the benefit of the gram sabha, it can be challenged in the court.”

The Congress, which is in a hurry to show that the project has made significant progress before the 2009 general elections, is jittery. “The state government is not expediting the process for acquisition of land in Lalganj so that the project could come up on time,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, chief of the state unit’s public relations department.

The plant, one of the biggest such facilities in India, will have an installed capacity to manufacture 1,000 state-of-the-art coaches per annum with the latest systems at optimum costs.