The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday deferred till 26th July its hearing on a petition challenging the acquisition of more than 460 hectares of land in a village in Gautam Buddh Nagar district.

A division bench comprising justices Amitava Lala and Ashok Kumar Srivastava deferred the hearing on petitions filed by farmers of Roza-Yaqoobpur village in Gautambuddh Nagar district, who had challenged the acquisition of 468 hectares of land by the state government in 2007-2008.

According to the petitioners’ counsel Pankaj Dubey, the court “is likely to club all related matters, including the acquisition of 608 hectares of land in Bisrakh-Jalalpur village which was listed for Thursday and hear them together on 26th July”.

Noida-based lawyer Parveen Singh Bhatti, who had also appeared on the petitioners’ behalf, said “the farmers have challenged the state government’s acquisition proceedings, wherein land was acquired invoking Section 4 (17) of the Land Acquisition Act. The aforesaid clause is said to be an emergency clause which is invoked only when there is urgency for acquiring land.”

“However, the entire land has been handed over to real estate developers who are building spanky residential complexes and other buildings and making money by selling the same to prospective buyers at exorbitant rates,” Bhatti said.

“The farmers’ contention is that they should not have been deprived of an opportunity to file their objections, by invoking the emergency clause, which was the only way they could have bargained for an acceptable rate of compensation”, he said.

Earlier Tuesday, the High Court had set aside the acquisition of nearly 590 hectares of land in Patwari and Deola villages of the district.

The order comes barely a fortnight after the Supreme Court had upheld its order dated 12th May, 2011 whereby acquisition of more than 150 hectares of land in Sahberi village was quashed.