Gujarat government ‘gifts’ part of disputed Vadodara plot to Yusuf Pathan

Yusuf Pathan in Parliament. File | Photo credit: PTI

Months after Yusuf Pathan broke away from the Trinamool Congress, the Gujarat government has proposed handing over a long-disputed urban plot in Vadodara to the former cricketer, donating 500 square meters of land and offering the rest at a discounted price.

The proposal submitted by the Vadodara Municipal Commissioner will be submitted for final approval to the BJP-led standing committee of the civic body on October 23, according to the schedule shared on Monday (October 19, 2026).

The proposal comes nearly four months after the Lok Sabha MP, who was elected from West Bengal’s Baharampur in 2024, joined a group of 20 TMC MPs who broke away from the Mamata Banerjee-led group and joined hands with the NCPI (Nationalist Citizens Party of India) to join the ranks of the NDA in Parliament.

Mr. Pathan had been looking for a 978 square meter residential plot adjacent to his family home in Vadodara’s Tandalja locality since 2012 but faced years of legal hurdles and notices from the civic body.

Under the new proposal, 500 square meters of VMC-owned land will be “gifted” to Mr Pathan, while the remaining 478 square meters will be offered at a 45% concession – valued at 55% of the rate set by the Vadodara Urban Development Authority (VUDA) Valuation Committee.

The allocation will be “subject to specific conditions” in accordance with a 2024 resolution issued by the state Department of Urban Development and Urban Housing, the proposal states.

A ten-year feud

The plot was at the center of a decade-long dispute between the cricketer-turned-politician and the civic body. In 2012, Mr. Pathan applied to buy a piece of land adjacent to his house. Although the VMC initially agreed, the Gujarat government rejected the sale in 2014.

In 2024, after Mr. Pathan was elected to the Lok Sabha from Baharampur in West Bengal on a TMC ticket, the civic body issued a summons to him to remove the alleged encroachment and vacate the VMC-owned land.

Mr. Pathan challenged the notice in the Gujarat High Court, arguing that the matter was more than a decade old and that the civic body should have issued a show cause notice before asking him to remove the alleged encroachment.

He also claimed that the land belonged to the municipal corporation and not the state government.

The High Court subsequently upheld the state government’s decision to reject his application for allotment of land. Mr. Pathan challenged the order before a division bench, but the appeal was dismissed as withdrawn in August this year after his lawyer told the court that he was pursuing his claim as part of state government policy.

The latest proposal, if approved by the standing committee, would pave the way for the allotment of the disputed land subject to conditions set by the city commissioner.

Published – 20 Oct 2026 15:58 IST