India, Oct. 21 -- India's largest container port will have to make good on a promise it failed to keep 40 years ago, to 256 families who gave up everything so that the shipping terminal could be built in Uran, across the harbour from Mumbai.

After lifting the villagers in Sehva gaon from their land and homes, and setting them down 12km away in cramped, poorly ventilated and unsanitary transit accommodation in the 1980s, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) will resettle them with dignity, thanks to a lawsuit they filed in June this year.

These 256 families, whose land was acquired, stripping them of their homes and livelihoods, have been living in a two-hectare transit camp in Sheva Koliwada in Boripakhadi village, Uran.

"The wai...