The Centre and the states are to file their affidavits before the SC by the first week of February 2017, on the question of recovering vacant SEZ lands. The SC bench headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar Singh, which heard a public interest litigation (PIL) petition on 9 January, has also called for more details from the states on the land status of SEZs.
Besides Telangana and AP, the top court also issued notices to four other states—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab and West Bengal—where there is the problem of large tracts of unused SEZ lands. A Hyderabad based “SEZ farmers protection and welfare association” has filed the PIL, which was originally concerned with the situation in AP and Telangana, but later included other states. “As the SC had given notices to six other states and the Centre on this issue, obviously we will be seeking the opinion of the Centre before communicating our views to the court,” Mahmood Ali, Telangana Deputy Chief Minister who handles the Revenue portfolio, told The Sunday Guardian on Thursday. “Our CM KCR was for securing justice to the farmers,” he added.
As a majority of the states are in favour of taking back the unutilised lands given to the SEZs, there is a possibility of restoring the same to around 25,000 displaced families in one go. It is too early to say whether the BJP government at the Centre would prefer to reverse the policy of the previous UPA regime, which persistently refused to review the land allotment to the SEZs. Beginning as a trickle in 2006, the grant of SEZs, which are meant to promote 100% exports, had become a torrent in the next three years. As the Centre appeared liberal in announcing SEZs in different sectors, the states vied with each other in grabbing them and the erstwhile combined AP ruled by Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy led Congress government was ahead of others in the race.
“This is for the first time that the SC has sought the stand of the states and the vacant lands in the SEZs and we don’t want to let go the opportunity to study the situation and reverse, if necessary, the policy to undo the loss to some of the displaced,” a senior official in the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC) told this newspaper on the condition of anonymity.
However, the governments have certain compulsions before taking back the unused lands allotted to the SEZs. Foremost of them is the loss of confidence of investors who had been wooed with the promise of providing them with land and other logistical facilities like water, power and roads. A senior official with the TSIIC said that many of the SEZ promoters were in touch with the government on the bottlenecks in grounding their projects. “We will go by the Centre’s policy on this tricky issue,” a director with the TSIIC said.
However, the NGO which moved the PIL in the SC is of the view that the lands acquired for the SEZs were lying unused and there was no harm in government taking them back and restoring that to the farmers. “The SC verdict on the Singur case in West Bengal is guiding us in this case too; we hope the apex court will do justice to the displaced,” K. Shravan Kumar, counsel for the farmers, told The Sunday Guardian.
According to the data gathered on the website of Parliament, as many as 4.842 hectares of land had been acquired for over 60 SEZs in these states, but only 10% of that had been in use and the rest was lying vacant, said Shravan Kumar. In most cases, the farmers were paid meagre compensation of around Rs 1.5 lakh, which was far below the market price, he said.
The petitioners have also questioned the un-kept promise of providing jobs to the land-displaced in the SEZs. Of the promised 12.5 lakh jobs in the SEZs, only 45,000 jobs were created in the last nine years. Another opponent of the SEZs and noted economist Dr Pentapati Pulla Rao from AP told this newspaper: “Where is the need for the government to allot as many as 25,000 acres for Kakinada SEZ when the displaced farmers were still seeking justice?”