2,000 Gujarat farmers oppose bullet train land acquisition

Gandhinagar: Despite the State and the Central government's claims about land acquisition for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project, the Bullet Train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, being almost over there are still around 2000 farmers opposing the land acquisition in Gujarat.

Around 5% of the land required is still to be acquired according to the information disclosed by the state government in the Gujarat assembly.

A couple of Congress legislators had questioned the state government about how much land was required for the acquisition for the High Speed Rail Network (Bullet Train) between Ahmedabad and Mumbai in various districts across the route, how much was acquired and how many complaints from farmers were received by the government regarding the acquisition.

Replying to these legislators, Revenue Minister Kaushik Patel informed that a total of 73,64,819 hectare land was required for the project. Out of the required land, 69,98,888 land was acquired so far and still 3,65931 hectare land was to be acquired from the farmers, which is around 5% of the total land required.

The legislators had also asked how many farmers had opposed and complained to the authorities regarding the land acquisition.

The Minister replied that a total of 1,908 farmers had opposed or complained about the PM's project; the maximum complaints were from Surat 940, followed by Bharuch 408, Valsad 236, Navsari 209, Vadodara 26 and four farmers from Ahmedabad.

Earlier, unhappy with the verdict of the Gujarat High Court in the petitions challenging the acquisition of their land for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project, the farmers and other similarly situated project affected persons decided to approach the Supreme Court against the high court's verdict.

The farmers had contended through their petitions that since the project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai involves Maharashtra, Gujarat, and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the appropriate authority to initiate the land acquisition proceedings is the union government and not state.