Kolkata: As the debate over farmland acquisition for Tata Motors car project in West Bengal continues, the legal experts feel that the acquisition could have been challenged in the court.
The lawyers also said the campaign by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress to collect affidavits from farmers was an exercise in futility and it has no legal basis.
According to eminent barrister Subodh Ukil, the government could not acquire land for private purposes like setting up of a car plant by the Tata group and said there was a proper procedure for it.
"There is no bar on the government from acquiring land and then giving it to a private party if the state satisfies itself that the land would be used for public purpose," Ukil, who has a book on the Land Acquisition Act, told PTI.
He also said there was a provision as per which the government was supposed to issue a notification.
Former union minister Ajit Panja termed the acquisition of land for Tata Motors as "wholly illegal, arbitrary and bad in law."
Panja said that there was a provision for such acquisition by following three mandatory norms. Under the mandatory provisions, the concerned company must prove by affidavit that they had searched for appropriate land on their own.
West Bengal Advocate General Balai Roy, however, termed the land acquisition at Singur as legal since by establishing the Tata Motors factory and other ancillary industries.
He, however, also accepted that there was a provision for challenging such an acquisition.
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