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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/039public-purpose039-in-land-grabs-mj-antony-19916.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 'Public purpose' in land grabs-MJ Antony | Im4change.org
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'Public purpose' in land grabs-MJ Antony
-The Business Standard

States often misuse emergency powers to muzzle protests from owners

A new land acquisition law was on the anvil for years. The latest avatar of the Bill, not yet laid on the table of Parliament, is still being re-looked and reworked with nearly 160 changes proposed. Issues are many, like the "public purpose" fig leaf, the consent clause, sharing the compensation payment, resettlement and rehabilitation of the displaced people and forest rights.

While the debate is going on in the capital, and more innocent blood flows in distant places, dire instances of land acquisition have surfaced in the Supreme Court. In a judgment delivered a few days ago, the court was compelled to remark that "the strong arm of the government is not meant to be used nor it should be used against a citizen in appropriating the property against his consent without giving him right to file objections on any ostensible ground".

One of the most abused provision in the land acquisition law is the emergency power granted to the state to take over land without giving any opportunity to the owner to file objection. Land is acquired mostly to build commercial or industrial projects, or build housing complexes. They take years to come up and cannot justify the invocation of emergency provisions. But the authorities take this easy route to take possession. After the notification, many projects do not even take off. Thus, the land owner is displaced and no "public purpose" is served.

The present case, which provoked the Supreme Court to make the above observations, is typical [Laxman Lal (dead) vs State of Rajasthan]. In 1980, the state government issued a notification for acquiring a certain piece of land in Dungarpur, purportedly for building a bus stand. However, nothing was done later. While the issue was almost forgotten, suddenly in 1987, the government came up with another notification - this time invoking the emergency clause in Section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act. In such cases, the authorities can exercise its extraordinary powers to take over the land dispensing with all procedures. Land owners need not be heard at all. It is little short of land grabbing by the state.

When the owners (all of them have died by now) moved the high court, the single judge and the division bench rejected their writ petitions. The division bench interpreted the law strictly and emphasised that "the government can invoke its provisions at any time; there is no statutory bar so far as the action is concerned". It even relied on the medieval doctrine of eminent domain. "The power of compulsory acquisition of land is in the nature of a power of eminent domain which the state is entitled to exercise keeping in view the larger public interest as against individual interest," it said.

The successors of the land owners took their legal battle to the Supreme Court, where fortune favoured them. It quashed all the notifications and ordered the restoration of the land to the legal representatives. The bus stand conceived by the civic authorities three decades ago had not come up; instead the land owners died fighting the protracted litigation. The question could well be asked whether the construction of a bus stand should take so many years, and whether this is a ground for invoking the emergency provision at all.

Though the Constitution started with the right to property as a fundamental right, it was demoted to an ordinary right (Article 300A) during the political and ideological tussles in the Indira Gandhi years. The Supreme Court has tried to shore up what is left in the right, by making stray observations that "though the right to property is not a fundamental right, it is a human right". In the present judgment, the Supreme Court again said, "Though it is no longer a fundamental right, the constitutional protection continues in as much as without the authority of law, a person cannot be deprived of his property."

It further tried to hedge the power of the state to appropriate private property by ruling that it could be done only for "such public purpose of real urgency which cannot brook delay of a few weeks or months". The power can be exercised only in an "unforeseen emergency". It is not a "routine" power and should not be lightly invoked. The government may be "satisfied" (as it states in the notifications) that the land is required urgently, and the court is bound to take the word for what it is worth, normally. But if the land owners can prove that there is no "public purpose" or the action is mala fide, or the authorities did not "apply their mind" (which, in fact, means they had some other game plan), the court will intervene. The court has come across several instances in which lands have been acquired to settle political scores against hostile boroughs after an election or to feather one's own nest.