Gujarat Offers Yusuf Pathan Land the Court Called Encroachment

Vadodara’s civic body has proposed gifting Yusuf Pathan 500 square metres of municipal land next to his family home. The remaining 478 square metres would go to the former India cricketer at 55 percent of the valued rate. The BJP-run standing committee is scheduled to take up the plan on October 23, on a 978-square-metre Tandalja plot valued at Rs 20.53 crore.

Last year a Gujarat High Court judge called Pathan’s long occupation of that plot “nothing but encroachment.” The same files now route the land through a sportsperson circular, after he left the Trinamool Congress for an NDA-aligned party.

The High Court Called It Encroachment

Pathan, the Baharampur MP and elder brother of former India cricketer Irfan Pathan, went to court in June 2024 after the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) told him to clear the plot within 15 days. The notice named Final Plot 90 in Tandalja Town Planning Scheme 22, a reconstituted parcel of the kind produced by the Gujarat town planning scheme system, and sat beside the family bungalow.

His then counsel, Yatin Oza, told the court the land belonged to the civic body and that “the state has no business to interfere.” Pathan also said he had “recently been elected from a different party” and that “attempts are being made to harass me.” Justice Sangeeta Vishen, at an early hearing, told him that after 10 years “perhaps the right is lost and so is the remedy.”

The August 2025 High Court judgment in Yusuf Mehmudkhan Pathan v. State of Gujarat, Special Civil Application No. 9027 of 2024, went further. Justice Mauna M. Bhatt held that Pathan had no allotment order and had paid nothing, that a wall and an animal shed on the plot were a clear occupation of civic land, and that offering money later could not cure that.

Without paying consideration or without any order of allotment in favour of the petitioner, it would be improper to occupy the land.

Justice Mauna M. Bhatt, Gujarat High Court

The judge added that a celebrity MP “owes certain added responsibilities and duties towards the law of this country” and cannot seek to “regularize encroachment” by offering to pay later. The petition was dismissed. The court expected the corporation to reclaim the land promptly. Pathan, the order said, had “simply enjoyed the plot without there being any right over it.”

Rs 20.53 Crore Was the Auction Price

The 2012 request was for a 99-year lease without a public auction, on security grounds for Pathan and Irfan. The standing committee and the general board backed a direct allotment at Rs 57,270 a square metre, then about Rs 5.60 crore for the whole parcel. Because the sale skipped bidding, it needed the Urban Development Department. On June 9, 2014, the state refused.

VMC later said Pathan fenced and occupied the plot anyway. For a decade the file stayed quiet. It moved again in June 2024, two days after Lok Sabha results, when a BJP-run corporation issued the encroachment notice. Former corporator Vijay Pawar had pressed the civic body to take the land back. Ward councillor Nitin Dongha asked for a land-grabbing complaint.

In July 2026 the standing committee approved a fresh valuation of Rs 2.10 lakh a square metre, putting the 978-square-metre parcel at Rs 20.53 crore, and grouped it with six other civic plots headed for auction. On August 10, municipal commissioner Arun Mahesh Babu withdrew that valuation after the general board asked how the corporation could auction land still under occupation and still in court.

HOW THE TANDALJA PLOT MOVED FROM LEASE TO GIFT

1. March 2012: Pathan seeks a 99-year lease of Final Plot 90, citing security, and the civic house backs a direct allotment without auction.
2. June 9, 2014: The Urban Development Department rejects the lease and says valuable public land must go through open bidding.
3. June 6, 2024: VMC serves a 15-day notice to remove the alleged encroachment, two days after Pathan wins Baharampur on a Trinamool Congress ticket.
4. August 21, 2025: A single judge upholds the 2014 rejection and holds that long possession without payment creates no right.
5. July 2026: The standing committee prices the plot at Rs 2.10 lakh a square metre for a public auction, then the commissioner pulls the file.
6. August 13, 2026: A state resolution approves a gift-and-concession allotment; it reaches VMC on August 29, and Pathan withdraws his appeal on August 31.

In June 2026, while the auction track was still alive, a Division Bench led by Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal, sitting with Justice D.N. Ray, asked how Pathan had entered and fenced public land without a formal allotment. The bench also warned that staying on the plot could raise his money liability, and gave him time to pursue a state policy for international sportspersons.

Gujarat Will Gift 500 Square Metres

The proposal now before the standing committee splits the same Final Plot 90 in two. Five hundred square metres would be allotted as a gift for residential use. The other 478 square metres would be transferred at 55 percent of the rate fixed by the Vadodara Urban Development Authority (VUDA) valuation committee on March 17, 2026, a 45 percent cut on that slice.

WHAT THE SPLIT COSTS ON THE CIVIC VALUATION

At that rate Pathan would pay Rs 5.52 crore for land the civic body had valued at Rs 20.53 crore. The 2012 upset value for the same parcel was Rs 5.60 crore. Occupation charges for the years of alleged unauthorised use have not been fixed in the papers now circulating, and the commissioner has said other conditions are still open.

What the Sportsperson Circular Allows

Pathan’s lawyers had already pointed the High Court to a 1999 state policy on land for international sportspersons. VMC’s reply then was blunt: the plot was municipal, not state land, so that circular did not run. The 2025 judgment still upheld the 2014 refusal to skip an auction. The Division Bench in June 2026 did not hand him the plot. It gave him a window to apply under the policy.

On August 31, senior advocate Shalin Mehta told the court he had instructions to withdraw the appeal. “We were waiting for the Corporation to respond. We are saying that there is a circular which allows international cricketers to be given a plot. I’ll withdraw it now because I have not heard anything from them,” Mehta said. The withdrawal was unconditional.

By then the August 13 resolution was already with VMC. The civic proposal now says the allotment would follow terms in a 2024 resolution of the Urban Development and Urban Housing Department. The man who argued that the state had no business in a municipal plot is taking the same plot under a state circular. The corporation that called him an encroacher is the body asked to sign the gift.

The Encroachment Notice Came After the 2024 Result

Lok Sabha results came on June 4, 2024. Pathan had beaten Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in Baharampur by 85,022 votes. The VMC notice is dated June 6. That timing is why the 2024 petition sounded like politics. The 2025 judgment treated it as a land case and still found against him.

On June 14, 2026, after the BJP won the West Bengal Assembly, Pathan was among 20 Trinamool Congress MPs who broke away and merged with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India, a registered unrecognised party that then sat with the NDA in Parliament. He was named a national vice-president of NCPI. The gift proposal reached the standing-committee agenda after that switch, not after the 2025 judgment.

His parliamentary record already treats Plot 90 as home. The Lok Sabha member page lists his Vadodara address as Plot No. 90, Bage-e-Mehmood, behind Angan Bungalow on Vasna Road. The dispute is about Final Plot 90 next to that bungalow. The family, including Irfan at times, has lived against that boundary for years.

THE SEQUENCE THE PUBLIC ARGUMENT KEEPS RETURNING TO

• The 2014 bar: The state refused a no-auction lease and told the civic body to use open bidding for valuable land.
• The 2024 notice: A TMC MP was told to vacate within 15 days, two days after the Baharampur result.
• The 2025 finding: The High Court called the occupation encroachment and told VMC to take the land back.
• The 2026 switch: Pathan left the Trinamool Congress on June 14 and joined an NDA-aligned party as a national vice-president.
• The 2026 papers: A state resolution in August framed a 500-square-metre gift, and the standing committee was given an October 23 date.

That chronology is what the political fight is actually about. The circular for sportspersons has been on the books since 1999. It did not produce a gift while Pathan was a Trinamool MP, and it did not stop the 2014 rejection or the 2025 order.

No Precedent, and Land Back to the Civic Body

The August 13 resolution tries to wall the case off. It says the arrangement will not set a precedent for similar cases. It also tells the revenue department to allot VMC other land of equivalent value, so the corporation is not, on paper, stripped of an asset.

Equivalent land somewhere else is not the Tandalja plot beside the Pathan bungalow. In July the civic house was preparing to auction that exact parcel at Rs 2.10 lakh a square metre. The general board stopped the valuation because the occupation and the court case were still live. The gift route now does what the 2014 department said should not be done: it moves valuable municipal land to one person without a public bid.

Arun Mahesh Babu has confirmed that VMC received the government’s approval. “However, the details are yet to be finalised, and the proposal will have to go through VMC’s standing committee and general board approval process,” he said. Payment terms, any charge for the years of occupation, and the fine print of the 2024 department resolution still sit with those two houses.

October 23 Goes Before the Standing Committee

The municipal commissioner’s proposal is on the standing-committee agenda for October 23. If that panel clears it, the general board still has to ratify. Only then can the land estate department complete an allotment. Until those votes, Pathan has a state resolution and a withdrawn appeal, not a conveyance.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The split: 500 square metres as a residential gift and 478 square metres at 55 percent of the March 17, 2026 VUDA rate.
• The valuation: Rs 2.10 lakh a square metre, or Rs 20.53 crore for the full 978 square metres.
• The court record: The 2025 judgment found encroachment and upheld the June 9, 2014 rejection of a no-auction lease.
• The political date: Pathan left the Trinamool Congress with 19 other MPs on June 14, 2026, and became an NCPI national vice-president.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The standing committee vote: October 23 has not been held, and the general board has not ratified.
• Occupation dues: Whether Pathan must pay for the years of alleged unauthorised use has not been settled in the circulating papers.
• The substitute land: Which parcel the revenue department would give VMC, and at what value, has not been named.

If the standing committee clears the file on October 23, Final Plot 90 still needs the general board. The plot next to the Pathan bungalow would then move under a circular the resolution itself says other people cannot use.