SC refuses Mumbai SEZ plea for staying land acquisition

New Delhi, June 5: The Mumbai SEZ Ltd, promoted jointly by industrialist Mukesh Ambani and his confidant Anand Jain, runs the risk of being scrapped after the Supreme Court today refused to stay the land acquisition process that otherwise has to conclude by June 8.
A Bench headed by Justice B Sudarshan Reddy dismissed the plea of the firm challenging the Bombay High Court interim order that refused to stay the process of land acquisition.

MSEZ, which was to come up in an area of 10,000 hectares at an investment of Rs 40,000 crore, had last month filed a writ petition before the High Court seeking a direction to the Raigad district administration to speed up land acquisition initiated under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, 1984.

Land acquisition for SEZs has to be completed within two years from the date of approval. The Mumbai SEZ project was given clearance in June 2005 and it has already been given two extensions and the latest deadline expires on Monday.

A stay would have made the deadline redundant.

The Supreme Court, however, issued notice to the Maharashtra Government on another plea of MSEZ Ltd seeking transfer of its petition pending before the Bombay High Court.

The project ran into trouble after farmers in 22 villages opposed the land acquisition process in a referendum initiated by the state government last year, but the outcome was not legally binding. PTI