Events & Personalities
Usurping mills’ land
Since the 1990s, when two National Textile Corporation (NTC)-owned mills, Podar and Digvijay, closed down and their leases expired, the owners of the plots on which they were located have been battling in the courts to get their properties back. The Digvijay mills plot is owned by the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Group, one of the biggest and oldest landowners in Bombay, and its case against the NTC is pending in the Supreme Court (SC), reported The Times of India (TOI) on November 30, 2014.
The Jeejeebhoys’ hopes were raised after the SC ordered the NTC to hand over the Podar Mill plot to the Seth Hirachand Rupchand Charities Trust in 2011. The apex court dismissed the argument that the public sector unit did not come under the purview of the Rent Act and ordered NTC to hand over "peaceful possession” of the land by June 30 this year. But the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government bypassed the SC order when in October 2014 President Pranab Mukherjee passed an ordinance to exempt NTC from laws used to protect valuable lands on which sick textile mills were located, notes TOI. Meanwhile, the Jagad family that owns Podar Mills has sold the prime 2.5 acre plot in Lower Parel to a developer for an undisclosed amount.
"NTC has been disposing textile lands in Bombay and appropriating the proceeds. It knew it can’t sell private owners’ land under an expired lease. So it connived to bring in an ordinance to usurp the land,” a Jeejeebhoy Group spokesperson informed TOI, adding that the Group will move the SC against this measure. TOI had earlier reported that the former government at the Center had decided to use the ordinance route to hang on to the properties and not return them to their rightful owners. This was being done to "deflect the perception that the government had handed over prime land to private parties, while rendering mill workers jobless,” the newspaper concludes.
The Jeejeebhoys’ hopes were raised after the SC ordered the NTC to hand over the Podar Mill plot to the Seth Hirachand Rupchand Charities Trust in 2011. The apex court dismissed the argument that the public sector unit did not come under the purview of the Rent Act and ordered NTC to hand over "peaceful possession” of the land by June 30 this year. But the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government bypassed the SC order when in October 2014 President Pranab Mukherjee passed an ordinance to exempt NTC from laws used to protect valuable lands on which sick textile mills were located, notes TOI. Meanwhile, the Jagad family that owns Podar Mills has sold the prime 2.5 acre plot in Lower Parel to a developer for an undisclosed amount.
"NTC has been disposing textile lands in Bombay and appropriating the proceeds. It knew it can’t sell private owners’ land under an expired lease. So it connived to bring in an ordinance to usurp the land,” a Jeejeebhoy Group spokesperson informed TOI, adding that the Group will move the SC against this measure. TOI had earlier reported that the former government at the Center had decided to use the ordinance route to hang on to the properties and not return them to their rightful owners. This was being done to "deflect the perception that the government had handed over prime land to private parties, while rendering mill workers jobless,” the newspaper concludes.
◆ ◆ ◆
From the archive