Madras HC vacates stay on registration of deeds by IT company

The Madras High Court Thursday vacated its stay on registration of deeds pertaining to the land purchased by IG Infra Ltd, accused of trying to mortgage a portion of the marshland at Pallikaranai here to get a Rs 1,350 crore loan.

A division bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and P Rajamanickam vacated the stay on a miscellaneous petition by the IT company, which owned the property, enabling it to register its mortgage deeds.

The matter relates to a PIL by social activist M Sentil Kumar based on a newspaper report that the IT firm allegedly attempted to mortgage a portion of the marshland, protected by an order of the court, after obtaining 'patta' (land ownership document) in collusion with forest and revenue authorities.

The petitioner had submitted that the entire marshland was in 2013 assigned to the state forest department by the Chennai Corporation under the Forest Act, 1888.

He had alleged that lands in about 35 survey numbers of the marshland had been illegally alienated to the company and on April 16 it has submitted a mortgage deed with the sub registrar office, Saidapet, for registration in favour of the Axis Trustee Service Limited as a security for Rs 1,350 crore loan.

However, the company had contended that the land was not marshland as alleged and had been purchased between 2004 and 2007 through sale deeds from the Power of Attorney of retired high court judge G Ramanujam.

On October 1, the court had restrained the registration department from registering any mortgage deed involving the portion of marshland and also directed the officials concerned not to grant lease of the land to the company.

During the hearing Thursday, the bench pointed out that the affidavit filed by the state forest department said the 1,716 acres of marshland originally transferred by Chennai corporation to the department was intact and none of the survey numbers transferred to it was found to have been assigned to the company.

Noting that the PIL petitioner has not produced any documents to substantiate his claim, the bench vacated the stay.