₹3,000-cr Gwal Pahari land belongs to panchayat: Gurugram court

However, the court has given time to the 322 entities claiming ownership over the land to file an appeal before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The district and sessions court on Wednesday accepted 226 appeals of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) over the disputed 464 acres of prime land at Gwal Pahari and declared the gram panchayat as the owner of the land.

Since Gwal Pahari shares its borders with Gurugram city, New Delhi and Faridabad, the land here is costly. (HT File)

However, the court has given time to the 322 entities claiming ownership over the land to file an appeal before the Punjab and Haryana High Court and has “directed to maintain status quo in relation to alienation, construction, possession or change of nature of the land during the prescribed period of limitation to file appeal”.

According to MCG officials, more than 300 of the 322 entities are villagers and owners of farmhouses, while there are two real estate developers who have under-construction special economic zone (SEZ) projects in the area.

The land which is estimated to be worth over ₹3,000 crore, as per MCG officials, has been under scrutiny since January 2017 when TL Satyaprakash, the then district collector and MCG commissioner, had declared that the villagers, farmhouse owners and private developers were the rightful owners of the land and had declared invalid an earlier judgment by the revenue department, which gave ownership of the land to the MCG.

MCG officials said additional district judge Jasbir Singh Kundu, in his order, on Wednesday, said the private owners—villagers, farmhouse owners and private developers—had no grounds to claim ownership of the 464 acres land and that the ‘gair mumkin pahar’ (uncultivable land) originally belongs to the local panchayat.

“There is no provision in the VCL (Punjab village common land) Act or VCL Rules to sell shamlat (common village) land in instalments and resolutions passed by the panchayat was held illegal ….,” the court observed.

On Thursday, MCG issued a public release on the issue.

The release read: “The Court of Additional District Judge Jasbir Singh Kundu has set aside all trial court decreed 118 suits related to Gwal Pahari on August 31. The order in this regard was received on September 5. Earlier, on April 16, the Court of Civil Judge (Senior Division) Prashant Rana had ordered that ownership of the 464 acres land will rest with the private owners. MCG had filed an appeal against the order in the sessions court and the appellate court vide its order has set aside the order of lower court’s decision. The question of title was decided in favour of the gram panchayat, Gwal Pahari.

“However, MCG has been directed on the basis of the decision given in Surajbhan’s case, which is under challenge before Hon’ble Supreme Court, and Government of Haryana is praying for free-of-cost transfer of land from gram panchayat to corporations because latter are the natural successors,” the release further read.

Since Gwal Pahari shares its borders with Gurugram, New Delhi and Faridabad, its geographical location renders the land here valuable.

The district and sessions court, in its order on Wednesday, also directed the MCG to pay monetary compensation to the panchayat for transferring the ownership to them. However, this order will be challenged by the MCG, officials said.

“As per the court’s order, if MCG wants to own this land they will have to pay compensation to the owners of the common land (village proprietors). We are going to going to challenge this direction and have started executing the necessary preparations,” MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav said.

MCG’s claim over ownership of the land goes back to its inception in 2008. The municipal body claims that the 464 acres belong to local panchayats, according to the Punjab Village Common Land Act, and the land was transferred to the MCG after the formation of the civic body.

The MCG’s stance has been opposed by villagers, farmhouse owners and private developers who had purchased land prior to MCG’s formation.

The district and sessions court, in its order, has said that since its judgement can be appealed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court “till the parties exercise their right to appeal, a status quo is required to be maintained to avoid further complications. Hence, parties to the proceedings are, hereby, directed to maintain status quo in relation to alienation, construction, possession or change of nature of the land during the prescribed period of limitation to file appeal.”

In addition, the court has also directed Gurugram divisional commissioner D Suresh to submit a “fact-finding report within three months on the role of local machinery in the entire episode and while undergoing said exercise, he is supposed to take into purview all identically located vulnerable pieces of panchayat land/common land/gair mumkin land so that local administration could be sensitised in time,” the judgement states.