For more than a decade, the 978 sq m plot beside the Vadodara bungalow of Yusuf Pathan, a member of the team that won India the 2011 World Cup, has been a walled-off dispute. The former India all-rounder, who became a Trinamool Congress MP in 2024, enclosed the plot and the Gujarat High Court called him an encroacher.

Now the dispute appears close to an end, settled by a resolution of the BJP government in Gujarat.On August 13, the state government cleared the plot for Pathan under its policy for international sportspersons. He gets 500 sq m free for residential use, and the remaining 478 sq m at 55 per cent of the market value.

At the Rs 2.1 lakh per sq m rate fixed by the Vadodara Urban Development Authority in March, the plot is worth about Rs 20.5 crore, but Pathan will pay roughly Rs 5.5 crore.The resolution says the decision sets no precedent. It orders the revenue department to compensate the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) with land of equal value.

The VMC’s standing committee and general board still have to approve it.Eighteen days after the resolution was signed, on August 31, Pathan withdrew his appeal in the high court. His counsel said he would pursue a resolution outside court.

The road there was long. In 2012, Pathan applied for a 99-year lease on the plot, citing his family’s security.

The VMC proposed allotting it without auction, but the state government refused in 2014 because the land had not been auctioned. Pathan built a boundary wall anyway.The file stayed quiet until 2024.

In March that year, Mamata Banerjee fielded Pathan from Baharampur, a Congress bastion held by five-time MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. On June 4, Pathan won by more than 85,000 votes.

Two days later, the BJP-ruled VMC served him an encroachment notice. In August 2025, Justice Mauna Bhatt upheld the state’s rejection.

She ruled that long possession without payment gave him no rights and that his celebrity status earned no leniency.Then Bengal turned. On May 4, the BJP won 207 of 294 assembly seats, ending the TMC’s 15-year rule.

Within weeks, 20 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs, Pathan among them, wrote to the Speaker backing the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Twenty is just above two-thirds of 28, the threshold the anti-defection law sets for a merger.

TMC MP Mahua Moitra berated Pathan on social media to show some shame and spine.On June 8, a division bench asked how Pathan had occupied public land without completing any formalities. It ordered an inquiry into who had handed him possession.

Three months later, the state government, who he had been fighting in court, partly gifted him the land he was earlier willing to pay for.Yusuf and his brother Irfan Pathan have both played for the Indian cricket team. They grew up in Vadodara, where their father was a muezzin at a local mosque.

Irfan, the younger one, got there first. He was a left-arm swing bowler who debuted at 19 in Adelaide and took a first-over hat-trick in the 2006 Karachi Test.

Yusuf, 43, was one of Indian cricket’s most feared power-hitters, a right-handed batter who also bowled off-spin. His international debut came in the 2007 World T20 final, where Irfan was player of the match.

Yusuf went on to win the 2011 World Cup and two IPL titles with Kolkata Knight Riders, and was once India’s fastest IPL centurion. Neither of the brothers have been free of controversy.

Yusuf served a backdated five-month doping suspension in 2018 after terbutaline from a throat medication showed up in a sample. As an MP, he drew criticism for a post about “good chai” while Waqf Act protests turned violent in Murshidabad, a district of his constituency.

Irfan, now a commentator, was dropped from the IPL 2025 commentary panel after complaints from players. He later said fellow Baroda cricketer Hardik Pandya had objected.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends