Five rooms of the land acquisition officer’s (LAO) office in Sector 14 were sealed on Wednesday on the orders of a district court over a 16-year delay in paying enhanced compensation to a 61-year-old woman whose land was acquired for the construction of the Dwarka Expressway.
During Thursday’s hearing, Dhanwati’s counsel, Dharshan Sharma, sought time to file a reply. The court adjourned the matter to Friday for further arguments and consideration of the pending payment before deciding whether to lift the seal. If things continue like this, this court will be compelled to proceed against the properties of the State of Haryana being a party to the present execution petition, which may put the district administration in an awkward situation,” the court observed in its order.
The dispute concerns half an acre of land belonging to Dhanwati’s family, for which compensation was initially fixed at ₹ 50 lakh per acre. In 2010, a district court increased the amount to ₹ 1.2 crore per acre while hearing a batch of petitions seeking enhanced compensation. After waiting nine years for the enhanced amount, Dhanwati filed an execution petition in 2019 to enforce the court’s order. However, the authorities failed to clear the outstanding compensation despite 37 hearings on her petition. On September 30, the court of additional district judge Sudeep Goel issued a warrant for attachment of the land acquisition office on a request by Dhanwati’s counsel. “The execution petition pertains to 2019 and despite that, the LAC has not made calculations and HSVP has not made any effort to get it done or to ensure speedy payment.
The court also asked the Gurugram deputy commissioner to look into the matter and ensure that all pending compensation calculations were completed by the land acquisition office within a stipulated period and forwarded to HSVP so that Dhanwati could receive her dues. The warrant was executed on Wednesday, when five rooms housing Gurugram district’s land records were sealed at the office, located in the Haryana Shahri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP) building.
