Lok Sabha MP Vinayak Raut on Thursday alleged that 123 hectares of land in Maharashtra's coastal Ratnagiri district was illegally transferred to Adani Transmission Ltd (ATL) between 2015 to 2018. The company, however, denied that it had purchased any land as claimed by the MP. Speaking at a press conference, Raut, who represents the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency and owes allegiance to Uddhav Thackeray, said Raipur Rajnandangaon Warora Transmission Company Ltd was handed over to ATL in July 2015.
The company had acquired forest land in four districts of Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra) to lay power lines, and intended to hand over the land acquired in Ratnagiri to the forest department as compensation, the MP claimed. According to Raut, the company needed 284.24 hectares of forest land in the Chandrapur, Wardha, Gadchiroli, and Gondia districts of eastern Maharashtra, and was supposed to hand over an equal area of land to the forest department. "From 2015 to 2018, the land was illegally acquired from farmers from Mauje Nigduwadi and Kundi villages in Sangmeshwar (in Ratnagiri district),” Raut alleged.
In a statement late in the evening, the ATL spokesperson said the allegations were not based on a "factual understanding" of the transmission business, and "no company needs such a huge land parcel to transmit electricity." "Further, it is clarified that Adani Transmission has not acquired any of such land as claimed," it added.
