Legal tremors in quake-hit areas

TNN / Jan 24, 2006, 21:49 IST

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The epicenter for the January 26, 2001 earthquake has now become ground for a number of legal battles.

BHUJ: The epicenter for the January 26, 2001 earthquake has now become ground for a number of legal battles. Many residents of Kutch have dragged the government to court questioning the very basis of the resettlement plan for victims and the new town planning scheme for the shattered town of Bhuj.
Builder Pradeep Jethi approached the Gujarat High Court alleging that the government took five times the Jantri price while alloting land to about 600 earthquake victims at the RTO relocation site near Bhuj.
While the Jantri price is Rs 60 per sq m, the government sold the 100 sq m plots at Rs 300 a sq m. In a 2001 resolution, the government had stated that land should be given to victims at Jantri price.
"These plots should have been given for Rs 6,000 instead of Rs 30,000," says Jethi, "and then the government puts a condition that the plot cannot be sold for a minimum of five years.

If you sell it after five years, you have to pay a premium to the government. I see no logic in such conditions, when I am putting my own money in making the house."...
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The court accepted Jethi's arguments and directed him to approach Bhuj Area Development Authority (BhADA), to purchase the plot at Jantri price.
However when Jethi approached BhADA, he was told that on September 4, 2002, the Jantri price for the RTO relocation site was fixed at Rs 300 a sq m.

"But even the latest Jantri states the price of survey numbers 347/1, 348/2 and 349 as Rs 60," Jethi says. He now plans to appeal against BhADA in court.
Dinaben Shah on the other hand found that the government acquired 24 sq m of her land under the new town planning scheme at Rs 2,000 a sq m, but then sold it at Rs 7,000 a sq ms.
She challenged the decision stating that she should have been given priority to rebuy the land at a reasonable price. There are a number of such cases in the town.
Advocate Raju Thakkar, son of former state revenue minister Premji Thakkar, gave his 24 sq m No mock drills mock Kutch's disaster preparedness plot for town planning for Rs 72,000....
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He bought the land back for Rs 2,64,000. Advocate Nilay Anjaria says, "We have requested the government not to follow such stringent town planning norms in Kutch as the issue here is resettlement of earthquake victims, not town planning."
But Kutch collector Pradeep Sharma says, "If the Jantri price was not followed at the RTO site or in town planning, it was because we are providing better roads, gutters and streetlights alongwith the land.
Besides, the cost of land has gone up more than five times at the site."

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