The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed his appeal against a Bombay high court order that scrapped the allotment of 20 acres of land for his institute.
The future is uncertain for filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s film institute, Whistling Woods, in Goregaon.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed his appeal against a Bombay high court order that scrapped the allotment of 20 acres of land for his institute.
A bench of justices HL Dattu and CK Prasad also pulled up Vilasrao Deshmukh, the then Maharashtra chief minister, for giving the prime land to Ghai about eight years ago. There is “lack of transparency in the allotment” as three chief ministers before Deshmukh had not cleared the project, the bench observed.
“The state government gave the land to its blue-eyed boy for a paltry sum of money. One cannot be treated as a blue-eyed boy for which [sic] the chief minister can bend or bypass rules to give away the land of the state.”
Ghai’s lawyer Mukul Rohatgi argued that more than Rs50 crore had been invested in the institute and the investment should not be destroyed.
“Ghai should at least be granted lease on the property,” he told the court.
The court, however, said that Ghai was a great filmmaker but “there are greater film makers” as well. “Why you have
been chosen? There must be transparency.” The bench said that Ghai could participate in a fresh bidding process for the property.
The present lawsuit is an offshoot of a public interest litigation filed by Rajendra Sontakke and four other agriculturists of Latur and Osmanabad in the Bombay high court. They had accused Deshmukh of “gross abuse of power” while allotting the land to Ghai.
Allowing the PIL, the high court had referred to a CAG report that said the land ought to have been valued at Rs31.20 crore as opposed to the Rs3 crore valuation done by the Maharashtra Film, Stage & Cultural Development Corporation (MFSCDC) Ltd.
It had directed Ghai to vacate 14.5 acres of land and had asked the state government to take its possession. The government on July 31, 2014 (when the ongoing courses at the institute gets over) would take charge of the remaining 5.5 acres on which the institute has been built, the court had said.
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