Chandigarh: With the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissing a bunch of petitions challenging the trial proceedings in the Manesar land case, decks seem to have been cleared for resumption of trial against former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and some senior bureaucrats who served in his office.
With Justice Manjari Nehru Kaul’s order on Thursday, the stay on the trial – which was in effect since December 2020 following petitions filed by some former bureaucrats and builders – stands vacated.
It may be recalled that the special CBI court, Panchkula, had in December, 2020, ordered framing of charges against 32 persons including former Congress CM Hooda, former IAS officer and principal secretary to Hooda, M L Tayal, former UPSC member Chhatar Singh, former principal secretary S S Dhillon and a promoter of Gurugram-based real estate company Atul Bansal.
The court had also summoned former managing director of Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC), Rajeev Arora, former chief town planner of town and country planning department, Surjit Singh, besides some other officials.
The case dated back to 2004 when the state government had issued a notification to acquire 912 acre land in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages for “public purpose’’ which led to farmers, who feared that the government step would lead to a fall in the prices of their land, selling their land to at throwaway prices to private property dealers, resulting in a loss of Rs 1,500 crore, according to CBI, which started a probe in 2015.
Stating that the then director, Industries department, in 2007, ordered the release of about 400 acre land in violation of the government policy, in favour of the people who had bought the land, thus benefiting the builders and developers, instead of the original land owners, the CBI filed a chargesheet in 2018, against 34 people, including Hooda.
The CBI counsel Ravi Kamal had in January this year, sought from the high court expeditious disposal of the case arguing that a stay has been in favour of the accused persons for the past four years.
