A day after the Bombay high court pulled up former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh for ‘misusing his position’ to grant ‘undue favours’ to Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International by allotting 20 acres of land at a concessional rate, another plot in Film City is mired in controversy.
An evacuation notice sent by the Maharashtra Film, Stage & Cultural Development Corporation Limited (MFSCDCL) to a farmer says it has given land to M/s Balaji Telefilms Limited. While the farmer, Abu Habale, 50, and MFSCDCL are set to fight in court, Balaji says it should not be dragged into the ‘private dispute’ as they asked for the plot, but it did not materialise.
Habale says he has been farming on the plot for years and the MFSCDCL suddenly cried encroachment. “They have called it ‘encroachment’ after giving the land to Balaji. They have uprooted trees and cut water supply. We paid charges to the government from the 1960s to the 1990s. The government then stopped taking money,” said Habale.
His advocate has sent a notice to MFSCDCL and Balaji for not following the due process before asking Habale to move out, and has said the move by the corporation to post guards at the plot is ‘encroachment’.
In his notice, Habale has threatened to invoke stringent sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. “My client is from the Warli community. They have posted guards who don’t allow my client to water the farming area. Habale has all the receipts of the charges paid to the government. He also has a ration card and receipts from buyers who bought vegetables from him,” said Godfrey Pimenta, Habale’s advocate.
“They just cannot ask my client to vacate the place without following the due process of law and say they are not responsible for the damage to crops,” Pimenta said.
MFSCDCL managing director Shyam Tagade says Habale is lying. “He does not have any documents. Having a ration card does not mean he owns the land. In fact, a film shooting took place there two months ago and there was nothing on the plot. Whatever farming he has shown must have come up in the past two months,” Tagade said.
He said MFSCDCL did not allow farming on the plot since 1977 as it intends to turn the place into a world class film city. “The government used to take nominal charges for farming which they allowed only during season time earlier. That does not mean the land belongs to him in perpetuity. That is not his area. He is probably doing it for some gain. The receipts he carries are not of the charges paid,” Tagade told DNA.
“Even if that is the case, the fact that he has been served a notice means he has been in possession of the land,” said Pimenta. The receipts, some of which are with the DNA, are from 1960, 1974 and 1992. The last was given by Aarey dairy.
“The receipts were given to Adivasis to collect a token amount from them for the cultivation they did. These were given for seasonal farming. They do not imply that farming happened at the same spot; it was for farming in the vicinity,” said DP Mishra, assistant commissioner of quality control, who also holds the additional charge of chief executive officer of Aarey colony.
“The government stopped taking money when these people misused the receipts by going to court and demanded rights for the plot,” said Mishra.
“The government cannot just ask people to move out. The law of adverse possession applies in such cases and they have to give something to them,” said Simpreet Singh of the National Alliance of People’s Movement.
Balaji was cautious in its response. “We have no comments. The dispute is between the two parties. We are tenants and will move out anywhere we are asked to,” said Sreenivas Shenoy, chief financial officer with Balaji. He said the plot was not even allotted to them. “It was meant to happen, but it did not materialise,” he said. However, the evacuation notice to Habale says the land given to Balaji from February 1, 2012 for a year.
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