High Court treats PDKV land encroachment report as PIL
   Date :23-Aug-2020

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Staff Reporter :
 
TAKING suo motu cognisance of ‘The Hitavada’ news report about encroachment over 26.69 ha land belonging to Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth (PDKV) situated in heart of the city, Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court has converted it into a Public Interest Litigation. A division bench consisting of Justice Z A Haq and Justice Avinash Gharote has treated the news-report titled “26.69 Ha of Agriculture College land in city under encroachment” as PIL and directed it to be placed before the division bench dealing with PILs on August 27.
 
Incidentally, on August 27, Chief Justice Dipankar Datta is heading the division bench and matter is likely to be placed before him for further consideration. The news report based on official figures collected under RTI by activist Abhay Kolarkar revealed that of 422.72 hectares of the PDKV land, 26.69 hectares is under encroachment. As per the information, there is encroachment on land with Agriculture College as well as PDKV. As per information furnished, PDKV has 111.32 hectares of land in Mouza Lendhra, 9.03 hectares in Mouza Sitabuldi, and 31.70 hectares of land in Mouza Gadga.
 
Of this total 152.05 hectares of land of PDKV in Nagpur city, 19.26 hectares is under encroachment. Agriculture College has named even District Collector, Nagpur and others (Variety Talkies lease case) as ‘encroacher’ of 0.62 hectares of land. It has named 11 persons of Kachhi community in the list of encroachers, stating that the litigation started in this regard in 1976. In some other cases, court proceedings have been going on since 1982, 1984, 1985, 1989, and 2000.
 
As much as 2.43 hectares of total land under encroachment, is under slum. Agriculture College has not got possession of land in any of these cases in court, the news-report has stated quoting a response to RTI query.