High court reserves judgment on two Dwarka e-way cases
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday reserved its judgment on the stalled Dwarka Expressway, a link road cutting through residential blocks that was sanctioned nine years ago to decongest the Gurgaon Expressway.
The high court had vacated the stay order on May 20 on the construction of the express link, following government submissions that eleven out of thirteen petitioners have accepted the government offered rehabilitation plan. The 2.5km stretch is part of the 18km-long Northern Peripheral Road ( NPR) or Dwarka Expressway, connecting Dwarka with the National Highway 8 ( NH 8). It is the widest project of 150 metres in Haryana and has been seen as the future lifeline of Gurgaon, as the moment its planning was conceived a decade ago, real estate tycoons jumped into the fray to develop residential and commercial projects.
Way back in 2008, the residents whose plots the Haryana government acquired for construction of NPR moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking intervention to realignment of the road. One after another several individual and group petitions landed up in the court which later clubbed all in one. The petitioners twice rejected the Haryana government’s compensation policy since 2010.
Two petitions were still left undecided and three more by those who were dissatisfied with the agreement between affected parties and the government earlier this month. The petitioners on Friday accused the government of changing the alignment of the road and also stated that they were not satisfied with the government offered rehabilitation plan.
The Haryana government counsel, Amar Vivek, on the other hand countered the allegations and stated that the government had done its best to settle the issue and to reach an amicable solution.
After the arguments from both the sides, the division bench of justice SK Mittal and justice HS Sidhu reserved the judgment.
The government on May 20 had earlier claimed that nearly 700 people who had challenged the land acquisition process in 2008 had accepted the government’s rehabilitation package.