India’s former star cricketer and Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Yusuf Pathan has landed in a major legal and political crisis over a plot of land. The local municipality in the Gujarat city of Vadodara has begun the process of putting up for public auction a government plot worth more than 20 crore rupees that he is accused of holding in illegal occupation.
The episode has also triggered intense political feuding and mudslinging within his own party, the Trinamool Congress.
The matter concerns the Tandalja area of Vadodara in Gujarat. In 2012, the former all-rounder applied to take a 978-square-metre government plot in the area on a 99-year lease. The Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) at the time approved a proposal to allot the land in Pathan’s name at a rate of 57,270 rupees per square metre, without any public auction.
The trouble arose when the proposal was sent to Gujarat’s urban development department for approval. In June 2014, the department cancelled the allotment, arguing that government land could not be given out in this way without a public auction or tender. Although the allotment was cancelled, Yusuf Pathan kept the plot fenced off and in his own possession.
A full 10 years later, in 2024, Yusuf Pathan was elected a member of parliament on a Trinamool ticket from the Baharampur seat in West Bengal. Soon afterwards, the BJP-controlled Vadodara municipality sent him a notice for the illegal occupation of government land. Pathan challenged the notice in court.
But in August last year, the Gujarat High Court upheld the government’s earlier cancellation order. Then, on June 15 this year, a division bench headed by the High Court’s chief justice gave Pathan four weeks to apply for the land under the international-sportsperson quota. At the same time, the court raised a sharp question: how had he held this valuable government land for 12 years without paying any money, even after the allotment was cancelled in 2014?
The court indicated that Pathan might have to pay compensation at the current market rate for the illegal occupation. At current market rates, the value of the land has risen by about three times, to 20.5 crore rupees. The municipality is now making final preparations to put the plot up for auction.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report