A drawn-out struggle for fair compensation, amidst amendments to land acquisition laws, has left residents unable to move on, while the new Central University of Jharkhand struggles to complete infrastructure work.

Ranchi, Jharkhand: In the villages of Manatu and Cheri in Kanke panchayat of Ranchi district, 139.17 acres of land slated to be acquired for the Central University of Jharkhand are stuck in limbo.

In 2011, the Ministry of Education made a formal request to the state government for 500 acres of land for establishing CUJ. However, the villagers were not aware of the plan until the district land officer (DLO) notified them on January 5, 2012, that the CUJ would acquire 107 acres in Manatu and 60 acres in Cheri, a combination of private and raiyat lands, i.e., land leased from the government for purposes of agriculture.

The villagers objected to the plan during the gram sabha at Manatu on January 27 that year. “We knew we would be deprived of many things if the university acquired the land. We used to do farming near the riverbank, growing rice and grains, and later vegetables. The university wanted to acquire land on the western part of our village, where crop productivity was much better than in the east. Moreover, the acquisition would block the roads leading to the lands of many villagers. Above all, land price has remained consistently low here,” said Ratan Mahto (62), the president of Manatu Bhumi Sangrakshan Samiti formed in December 2024, who was also a ward member in 2012. 

(Above)Ratan Mahto addressing a village meeting held in Manatu (below) Ratan Mahto showing the boundary wall.

Though the notification was revoked following objections, CUJ initiated construction work on some of the government as well as raiyat/private lands.

“The university started constructing Vivekanand Central Library in 2012-13. In 2014-15, the university asked us to vacate my livestock shelter to build a road to the library. When we refused, they threatened us with shelter demolition,” alleged Kanchan Mahto (53) a resident of Manatu. With Kanchan refusing to budge, the university road was then diverted. 

Kanchan Mahto standing outside his shop in Manatu (Photo - Nisha Kumari, 101Reporters)

However, on October 8, 2018, DLO released another notification regarding the acquisition of 79 acres in Manatu and 56.74 acres in Cheri, and 3.64 acres in Sukurhutu. “Sukurhutu has a lot of gairmajaura land, which is usually public land. Therefore, the state has the right to settle them,” explained Ratan. 

The notification ordered gram sabha meetings in Sukurhutu on November 26, 2018, Manatu on December 4, 2018, and Cheri on December 6, 2018. Despite these meetings, the locals were still not convinced about their employment prospects, compensation or resettlement for the affected parties. 

The sticking points

Kanchan was offered compensation for his three dismil land (0.03 acre) acquired for the library. “It was residential land, but the university offered compensation as per the market rate of agricultural land. Why would I accept that compensation? Agricultural rate is the lowest when compared to residential, commercial and industrial rates. And they are offering me as per the current market rate,” fumed Kanchan.

The villagers have been demanding that they be offered the market rate in 2017; in that year, many lands in the area were re-categorised by the Jharkhand government. Until then, there were only residential and commercial categories of land. In 2017, the residential rate for Manatu was Rs 1,33,949 per dismil, while the agriculture land rate in 2024 was Rs 89,347 per dismil.

The land in Sukurhutu has a higher market rate. However, Manatu- Cheri residents demand a similar compensation. They cite Section 26(b) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013, which specifies that while assessing and determining the market value of the land, the average sale price should be given for similar types of lands situated in nearby villages. 

However, DLO Krishna Kanhaiya Rajhans told 101Reporters that they act in accordance with the LARR Act. “If any raiyat has any problem with the compensation, they can express their disagreement,” he assured. 

Employment is another sticking point. Kanchan said that when he objected to the acquisition, he was assured of employment and compensation. “We had no objection to this proposal because we were happy that a Central University was coming up. But, to date, our children have not been employed, nor has the university considered our compensation demands.” 

The demand also states that permanent job offers should be given to the members of the affected families as per Section 31(h) and Schedule 2(4) of the RFCTLARR Act. However, they insisted that they should not be employed through an agency or third party.

Ratan Lal showing lands whose paths were obstructed due to the boundary built by the Central University of Jharkhand (Photo - Nisha Kumari, 101Reporters)

Diluting powers of the panchayat

Section 41(c) of the RFCTLARR Act gives special powers to gram sabhas under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, stating prior consent shall be obtained from the families affected by acquisition in Scheduled Areas. Manatu-Cheri falls under Ranchi district, one of the 13 districts in Jharkhand that come under the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996.

So, whenever the state intends to acquire land, it needs to consult the panchayat or gram sabha concerned and carry out a Social Impact Assessment (SIA), which was also proposed in the 2013 Act. However, in 2015, Raghuvar Das-led government passed an amendment bill to address the delays inherent in the SIA process.

As per a 2018 report, Section-10A of the amended RECTLARR Act, 2015, exempts the government from conducting SIA for infrastructure projects, including universities, schools, irrigation, etc. In contrast, Section 40 of the RFCTLARR Act, 2013, exempted the SIA only for defence projects or national security, or in case of an emergency in natural calamities or any other emergency, with approval from the President. 

The amendment diluted the powers of the gram sabha in intervening in land acquisition, so CUJ continued the construction of boundaries, electric wires, buildings, etc., on government as well as raiyat lands. The DLO too did not consider the demands of villagers.

The villagers had also requested that the Tangtang Toli Road that passes through CUJ should not be made a private path of the university, as it connects around 100 families of Manatu with the panchayat bhavan at a distance of 2.5 km. Without this road, the distance would exceed seven km. For now, its status quo remains unchanged. 

At any rate, the villagers don't have faith in the panchayat functionaries and believe them to be working with the authorities, not for the people.

Constructions that shouldn’t have been

The CUJ is operating campuses at Brambe and Manatu-Cheri. Most of the departments are being temporarily run at the 45-acre Brambe campus, located 25 km from Ranchi, as the Manatu-Cheri campus (17 km from Ranchi) has many incomplete buildings, with the acquisition process in limbo and stalled construction activities.

“Since 2012, the university in Manatu-Cheri has been under construction. There have been multiple instances when the university started building boundaries, electric poles, etc., on our lands without completing the process of acquisition,” said Ratan.

This has been possible due to the amended RFCTLARR Act, which doesn’t state that the construction cannot start until the land acquisition is complete.

The villagers claimed that the then mukhiya had requested them to let the university build its boundary walls, and the villagers acquiesced on the condition that the compensation would come through. When it didn't, the villagers then moved the Jharkhand High Court, with Jayanti Devi from Manatu filing the first writ petition on February 12, 2021, to stop the construction of boundary walls on raiyat lands. Subsequently, three other petitions were filed. 

Sunil Singh's wife Veena Devi standing outside their shop built on the land that the university intended to acquire (Photo - Nisha Kumari, 101Reporters)

Veena Devi from Manatu said in her petition (filed under the name of her deceased husband Sunil Singh) that CUJ built bore wells and installed electric poles on her 5.70 acres of land. They refused to refused to compensate her, citing its gairmajaura khas (public) land status.

However, Vishwajit Karmarkar, an advocate practising in Civil Court, Ranchi, told 101Reporters that there is a provision in the Jharkhand Land Acquisition law that allows compensation in such cases. “As per this law, in the special onsite survey conducted by the district administration on the government land allotted for projects of central public sector undertakings, the persons having land holdings, who have been legally registered more than 30 years from the date of transfer from landowner to tenant, in whose name the jamabandi [settlement] is running for more than two or three years, will be given the admissible compensation amount at the same cost as the raiyats,” he detailed.

Since Veena’s family has been residing on those lands for 30 years, the compensation applies to them as well. The Jharkhand High Court gave a single judgment on September 20, 2023, as the subject of the case in all four petitions was similar. The judgment restrained the CUJ from making any construction until the process of acquisition was completed, which included compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement.

Following the judgment, the construction work on Veena’s land was stopped. She recently built a canteen for college students on her land. She is yet to receive the compensation, but the judgment has given some relief to the families affected. 

Construction work stopped by the University after the high court ruling on the writ petitions (Photo - Nisha Kumari, 101Reporters)

Conflict takes new turn

Despite the HC order in their favour, villagers claimed that CUJ has been intimidating and harassing them using police force. One such conflict stems from Kanchan’s 0.18-acre land connecting the university's Science City Centre and the girls' hostel. It goes back to 2018 when the CUJ figured that a path here would make commuting to the girls' hostel easier. Kanchan’s family did not have problems with it back then, but when the university tried to get the road paved in 2020, they objected.

His earlier conflicts with the CUJ impacted his judgment this time. According to him, if the road was permanently constructed, then the court would ask why he did not object earlier. Therefore, Kanchan was one among the petitioners who, along with Ratan Mahto who filed a writ petition in 2021 to the Jharkhand HC to stop the CUJ from constructing anything on the lands of raiyats without completing the acquisition process. Only after the HC’s judgment did the road construction stop.  

The CUJ in 2021 offered a temporary job as an electrician to Kanchan’s elder brother’s son, Ajay Kumar. However, after two years, they fired him. Kanchan believes that this has happened because of the objection to road construction.

Though 101Reporters approached the CUJ authorities for clarity, there was no response. 

Kanchan alleged that the university and Kanke Police have intimidated him several times. According to him, on February 16, 2023, an undergraduate first-year student of the Environmental Studies Department filed a complaint to the CUJ administration stating that she and her friend (who is unnamed in the FIR) were harassed by three men on a scooter inside the CUJ campus around 4 pm on February 13. It said the men grabbed her arm and abused her. She further claimed that this has happened to many girls in the hostel. She did not know the three men, but was confident that they were locals. 

The CUJ’s security officer approached Kanke Police Station, where an FIR under Sections 341, 353, 354, 504, and 34 of IPC was registered, stating that on February 20, 2023, the path leading to the girls' hostel was blocked by local miscreants and people on foot were pelted with stones and abused.  

Kanchan and his brothers claimed that the police have been unofficially questioning them since the day the FIR was filed. “Although they were not named in the FIR, Kanchan, his three brothers, and two sons of his elder brother filed for anticipatory bail on August 2, 2023, in the Judicial Commissioner’s Court, Ranchi, fearing police action,” said Vishwajit.

Also, the student who filed the complaint later withdrew from her statement (as per the testimonials of the villagers wishing anonymity), and no evidence was produced. On August 7, 2023, the SI submitted its report, saying that this case was regarding the possession of the land by the CUJ and that they could not find any evidence supporting the claims made in the FIR. 

Cover Photo - Locals passing by the road built on Kanchan Mahto's land, that connects the Science City Center and Girls Hostel of Central University of Jharkhand (Photo - Nisha Kumari, 101Reporters)