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New Delhi: Last week, the Supreme Court issued a stern warning to the Maharashtra government for dragging its feet in settling a six decades-old matter with a Pune-based family, whose 24 acres of land were illegally taken over by the state government in 1961..
Declared lawful owners of the land situated in Punes Pashan area by the Bombay High Court in 1985, the family, according to the HC order, was supposed to get an alternate plot from the Maharashtra government..
However, an inadvertent oversight by state government officials led to the earmarking of notified forest land for the family, compounding the contestation that has not just delayed justice for them, but is also likely to cost the state exchequer heavily...
The family was forced to move court again when the state suspended clearances given earlier for the lands development by putting a condition that it was an inam land and until the requisite payment is not made, it would remain with the government..
So even though the state never designated the land as a protected forest, technically it continues to be one due to the notification, a position that CEC reiterated in its report, the lawyer further said.. Stuck in this legal quagmire, the family moved the Supreme Court in 2009 with a plea to direct the state to either denotify the land or compensate them...
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