Land acquisition for bullet train cleared

Ahmedabad : The Gujarat High Court on Thursday gave full clearance to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious bullet train project as it rejected over 100 petitions filed by farmers against the land acquisition process and "inadequate" compensation.

A bench of Justice Anant Dave and Justice Biren Vaishnav declined to entertain the petitions challenging the land acquisition for Ahemdabad-Mumbai bullet train project, a 508-km-long project is being undertaken by National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd.

Upholding the validity of the Gujarat amendment in 2016 to the Centre's land acquisition law, the court noted though the project is a multi-state, but the Centre had approved executive power to Gujarat to acquire land for it.

Indicating the legal validity of the process, it observed the President has given assent to this delegation of power, with retrospective effect, to Gujarat.

Hence the state can issue notification on the land acquisition process, though it did not have this power in the initial stage.