High Court Dismisses Pleas Against Builder in WWII Land Rehabilitation Case

The Bombay High Court has dismissed a series of petitions, including two PILs, challenging the development rights of a builder tasked with rehabilitating villagers whose land was requisitioned during World War II and later used for the National Defence Academy (NDA) in Pune. The court noted that the majority of the villagers had been offered possession of flats and that the allegations raised in the petitions involved disputed questions of fact that could not be adjudicated under a PIL.

The land in question was requisitioned by the British government in 1942 for World War II and later acquired for the NDA in 1951. To rehabilitate the affected villagers, land was procured at Mouje Hingane Budruk, Pune, in 1961. In 2001, the development of this land was handed over to Kakade Construction Co Pvt Ltd under an agreement with the villagers.

In 2018, some people claiming to be the heirs of the original affected villagers filed a petition alleging that the developer engaged in fraud, forgery, and manipulation of land records. They claimed that the rehabilitation scheme was not implemented as promised and sought the revocation of the development rights granted to the builder. The High Court clubbed this petition with another filed in 2019 and two PILs filed in 2009 and 2023 by two foundations on the same issue.

A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad, in its recent order, observed that such allegations of forgery and manipulation of records required detailed evidence and could only be examined by a civil court, not through a PIL. The court stated, 'The allegations of forgery and manipulation of records shall be the subject before the civil court where parties shall lead evidence. This is also a well-settled proposition in law that the writ petition involving dispute over immovable property shall not be maintainable.'

The High Court noted that a 2013 report by the Pune collector, placed before it in April, indicated that 315 out of 350 families had been rehabilitated. The court directed the builder to comply with the collector's report for the remaining 35 families. It also heard arguments from advocates Prathamesh Bhargude, Prabhakar Jadhav, and Sanjay Koban for the petitioners and recorded the submission of the builder's advocate, Karan Bhosale, that six of the 35 families had already been offered possession of flats.

At this stage, with the project almost complete, the High Court held that no order could be passed that would completely wash out the project. The court further stated, 'In our opinion, these PILs are not at all maintainable since the aggrieved persons have a remedy in law to approach the appropriate court.'