The Supreme Court recently passed an important judgment expanding the constitutional right to property with respect to land acquisition carried out by the government. An explainer on the judgment’s significance, by our legal research lead @Anmolg_law
https://webapi.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/8899/8899_2020_15_1502_53160_judgment_16-May-2024.pdf…
The case involved acquisition of private land by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation in 2009. KMC allegedly tried to forcibly enter the property, and later removed the landowner’s name from official records. A series of Calcutta High Court judgments invalidated the acquisition. leading to the Supreme Court appeal.
The case reached the SC, where the primary issue taken up was the power to carry out acquisition under section 352 of the KMC Act. The SC held that this provision merely confers that land acquisition may be carried out for a specific purpose and does not include the actual procedure.
The procedure for land acquisition was governed by other provisions in the act. More importantly, the SC held that these provisions must ensure that the Right to Property, imagined as one with multiple intersecting procedural rights, is followed.
Once a fundamental right in the Constitution, the Right to Property was made a legal right in 1978, via the 44th constitutional amendment. The SC noted that the right should not merely be restricted to the payment of compensation but should include several sub-rights
In paragraph 27 of its judgment, the SC named seven non-exhaustive sub-rights. These include the right of landowners to receive notice of the land acquisition and have their objections heard.
Several of these rights were already enunciated in the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and made stronger through the enactment of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 (LARR). The LARR had expanded the ambit of these rights to include people to be affected by the land acquisition, not just formal landowners.
But this judgment goes one step further to include the right to an efficient and expeditious process, citing examples of provisions that include a timeframe. Notably, the SC omits section 24 of the LARR, which invalidates land acquisition that has been significantly delayed.
Further, the last of the 7 sub-rights–the right of conclusion–imagines the land acquisition procedure as complete once compensation is paid and possession taken.
This is significant as in the majority of land acquisition cases, the government has taken possession of land without paying compensation, sometimes for decades. You can read more about this in our report “Justice: Delayed and Denied.”
https://landconflictwatch.org/all-publications…
The whittling down of LARR’s section 24, via a 2020 constitutional bench judgment, has been subject of much controversy. But the SC’s recent judgment completely omits any mention of the 2020 findings which significantly affected landowners’ right to be compensated fairly.
Presently, over 40% of the ongoing conflicts (331) in LCW’s database involve land acquisition laws. Over 37 lakh people have been affected by improper land acquisition proceedings.
Many of the recorded violations involve the sub-rights mentioned in the recent judgment. If unchallenged, this judgment could allow affected communities to more effectively contest controversial land acquisition proceedings.
Read more about the conflicts in our database at https://landconflictwatch.org/all-conflicts. You can also support our work by subscribing to our membership program at https://landconflictwatch.org/support-our-work…
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