Among the longest-lasting litigation, disputes over land acquisitions are on the top. The Supreme Court has just decided a case in which the playground of a school was taken over for a “ladies super market” in 1975 at the rate of Rs 4 per square ft. The school climbed the shaky ladder of law and lost in the end at the apex court.
The appeal had been lying in the court for eight years. Since the school, as an institution, does not die, it could stand the long haul. In many cases of individual land owners, the titles of the cases indicate that the original owners have died and the judgments will be received by their legal representatives.
If the land owner is particularly unlucky, as in the case of Bondu Ramaswamy vs the Bangalore Development Authority, the judgment will come only if one of the judges who heard the case is about to retire. This particular case involving nearly a hundred land owners was heard and the judgment reserved on March 23, 2007. One can be fairly sure that the judgment will be delivered before May 11, when the Chief Justice of India retires.
Most of the disputes arise over the rate of compensation. Though the court has laid down the criteria for calculating the compensation, the authorities usually botch up the relief. The Supreme Court pointed out one reason in its recent judgment in the Bhagwan Das vs the State of Uttar Pradesh case. “The award being only an offer on behalf of the government, there is always a tendency on the part of the collector to be conservative in making the award, which results in less than the market value being offered,” the court explained. “Invariably, the land loser is required to make an application to get the market value as compensation. He can make an application seeking reference to the civil court only when he knows that an award has been made.” Sometimes he does not get the information required for a long time or he is not given it due to “ulterior reasons”. Once six months pass, the government invokes the period of limitation to bar the land owner from demanding fair price. In the Bhagwan Das case, the Supreme Court granted relief to the land owners in that predicament.
In the Hari Ram vs the State of Haryana case, the court recently found an even worse case of arbitrariness and discrimination. The land was acquired in 1992 from 78 land owners for an urban mini-estate in Haryana, which led to 32 writ petitions in the high court. During the long history of the litigation, the government decided to release some of the lands to their owners. But many others were discriminated against and their lands, similarly situated, were not released.
This provoked the Supreme Court to make some acerbic remarks against the state government. The judgment commented: “The government has an obligation of acting with substantial fairness and consistency in considering the representations of the land owners. It cannot pick and choose and release their land from acquisition and deny the same to other land owners, creating an artificial distinction. The government has sought to set up make-believe grounds to justify its action that development planning has been kept in consideration.”
The court hinted at corruption prevailing in the process of land acquisition and release of some lands without following a uniform norm. The court observed: “If this court does not correct the wrong action of the government, it may leave citizens with the belief that what counts for the citizens is right contacts with right persons in the state government and that judicial proceedings are not efficacious.”
In 1984, 196 acres were acquired for the expansion of Tamil Nadu Magnesite Ltd, a state-owned company. This left a trail of suits which were concluded in favour of the owners by the Supreme Court only a few weeks ago in the Sagunthala (dead) vs Special Tehsildar case. Again, the arbitrariness was evident in calculating the compensation. The court stated that the classification of land into irrigated and unirrigated was unreasonable and erroneous. There were other considerations like proximity of the land to residential colonies and factories, and the land itself being used as housing plots.
In another decade-old case, Mysore Urban Development Authority vs Veer Kumar Jain, the Supreme Court last week found the land owners were not heard before the Karnataka government issued two de-notification orders. The court quashed the orders and asked the state government to start the process afresh.
The 1894 law on land acquisitions is being overhauled in the new social context. But the cases coming to the court show that it is not just the law which gives rise to litigation and frustration, but the way the government implements it. The road forks here, one leading to the court and another to lawlessness of the jungles.
