Ahmedabad: Gujarat High Court on Monday held that planning authorities cannot keep private land under reservation indefinitely by repeatedly revising development plans (DPs) without adhering to statutory timelines, and ordered Deesa municipality to hand over a plot to its owner.The court said that the authorities must acquire such a plot within the statutory timeframe or initiate a revision of the plan under the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act.The court held that the authority must acquire the reserved plot within the statutory period or initiate a revision of the plan under the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act. If it fails to do so, the landowners would be entitled to seek de-reservation under Section 20(2).Justice Niral Mehta allowed a petition filed by Ajaykumar Gehlot, whose 2,529 sq m land parcel in Nava Deesa of Banaskantha district was reserved for a proposed 24-metre DP road by Deesa nagarpalika. HC ruled that the reservation lapsed and brought an end to nearly five decades of uncertainty over the property, said Gehlot’s counsel Sharvil Majmudar.In this case, the private plot was reserved under the development plan and remained so from 1975. Although the development plans were revised from time to time, the court held that the revision process itself had been initiated only after the expiry of the mandatory 10-year period prescribed by law.The court examined the timeline of the municipality’s actions and said that it repeatedly failed to commence revision proceedings within time and then took years to complete the process. Such delayed exercises could not be used to defeat rights already accrued to landowners.The court observed that the way the proceedings were handled showed administrative lethargy and disregard for the requirements of the law. It noted that, because of this, “the petitioner has remained deprived of the beneficial enjoyment of his property for nearly five decades without the land being acquired in accordance with law”.HC further said, “The court has no hesitation in holding that the continued reservation of the petitioner’s land for almost 50 years is contrary to the scheme and mandate of the Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act 1976.”It added that since the authorities had failed to acquire the land within the prescribed statutory period and had also not begun the process of revising the final development plan within the time limit under Section 21, “the statutory right accrued in favour of the petitioner under Section 20(2) cannot be defeated by initiating revision proceedings thereafter”.
