HC defends individual rehabilitation rights of displaced citizens | mumbai news

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday questioned the ‘single unit’ theory of the state, a legal argument used to deny individual compensation to displaced people affected by the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary (KWS) Project.

In a ruling that could change the focus of rehabilitation rights, the court ordered Maharashtra authorities to provide a 91-year-old woman with a separate plot, establishing that displaced citizens are entitled to separate compensation even if they are part of it. . family unit.

Dagdabai Vitthal Kadam lived in her house in Zhadoli village, Satara, for over six decades before it was acquired in 2012 for the KWS Project. His three stepchildren each received compensation and alternative land as part of the project’s rehabilitation measures. Kadam was excluded from compensation, and the State argued that she was part of a “single unit” with her stepchildren and therefore indirectly benefited from her compensation.

Kadam’s lawyer, Ketan Shinde, argued that the state’s approach ignored her legal right to compensation, presenting records proving her ownership of the property since 1998 in the Gram Panchayat after her husband died. He further argued that the “single unit” concept was procedurally unfounded and unfair, as his stepchildren had been awarded individual compensation unrelated to his property.

The court clarified that under the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WPA), grouping Kadam with his stepchildren as a single entity had no legal basis. His independent ownership of the property, recognized since 1998, should give him the same rights to compensation and rehabilitation as any other owner. He also noted that treating the family as a single unit would contradict the allocation of individual compensation given to each of Kadam’s stepchildren.

The court noted that to protect people who acquire property through succession, the WPA also guaranteed Kadam the same rehabilitation that her late husband would have received. The judges criticized the State’s approach of selectively ignoring this provision, causing undue hardship to the elderly petitioner.