The Supreme Court Tuesday allowed Reliance Power to return 956 acres of land, near the national capital, acquired by the Uttar Pradesh government for an electricity-generating unit that had landed in litigations.The apex court disposed of as infructuous the petition by Reliance Power that had challenged a Allahabad High Court order of 2009. The high court had quashed the acquisition of land by the state government.The high court had also made it mandatory for the state government to seek a no-objection certificate from each seller of the land or return the compensation they received for the same. This was contested by the interested parties.
The Supreme Court disposed off the petition after the company said it wanted to return the 956 acres due to certain factors. For the record, Reliance Power had clearly said it would have set up the project had there been no legal issues with the land acquired for the project.In the petition, the company said it wanted to return the land for the gas-based power project on account of non-availability of feed stock.Reliance Power had moved the application after the Allahabad High Court judgment quashing the acquisition of land by the Uttar Pradesh government in 2004 and 2006 for the power project, as some people had challenged the manner in which the land was taken away.Reliance was awarded the project, and extended the acquired land, based on competitive bidding."The current situation is that there is acute shortage of domestic natural gas supply and therefore it is virtually impossible to obtain or secure any fresh allotment of domestic natural gas required to run the plant," Reliance Power had said in appeal.