The Hindu : Front Page : Sale of NTC mills land set aside

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 18, 2005

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Sale of NTC mills land set aside

Kalpana Sharma

MUMBAI: In a far-reaching judgment, the Bombay High Court on Monday set aside the recent multi-crore sales of textile mill lands in Mumbai by the National Textile Corporation (NTC). It has also paved the way for the availability of over 200 acres out of 600 acres of NTC lands for public open spaces and between 162 to 222 acres for public housing for a space starved city.

In its 368-page order, in response to a public interest litigation filed by the Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG), a High Court division bench of Justice S. Radhakrishnan and Justice S.D. Dharmadhikari held that the recent sales of NTC mills did not adhere to the scheme under the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) under which such sale was permitted. The court observed: "Unfortunately, NTC, like a private mill owner, was only keen in trading its land for high profits totally contrary to ... sanctioned BIFR schemes."

Public utilities

Under this, the NTC was permitted to sell only one third of the land while the rest had to be surrendered to the municipal corporation for public utilities and open spaces and another one third for public housing. Instead, since the beginning of this year, the NTC has sold the entire land of four of its 25 mills and one mill earlier.

These include the Apollo Mills sold to the Lodha group of developers for Rs. 180 crores, the Jupiter Mills to India Bulls Property for Rs. 276 crores, the Mumbai Textile Mills to the Delhi-based DLF group and Akruti Nirman for Rs. 702.2 crores and Kohinoor Mills No. 3 to Kohinoor Projects Company owned by Sena leader Manohar Joshi's son and Matoshree Realtor Pvt. Ltd. of Raj Thackeray for a record Rs. 421 crores.

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