Even before the new land acquisition law comes out of the tumult of political and social justice issues, the Supreme Court has discovered a few legal faultlines in the proposed Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. So there is still time to hear the call of the court in its recent judgment in the case, Soorajmull vs state of Bihar. The case involved a 1981 land acquisition, which was repeatedly notified under the infamous “ urgency” provision but allowed to lapse. The court ruled that the state had denied the land owner “ just and fair compensation for the land from which he was dispossessed well over three decades ago.” So the acquisition was struck down under the new law. On the 2013 law, the court observed that there seemed to an “ unexplained inconsistency between Section 24( 1)( a), which allows an acquisition to stand despite a failure to pass an award while only requiring the compensation to be determined and Section 24( 2), which deems the acquisition to have lapsed for a failure to pay compensation or take physical possession of the land where an award has been passed over five years prior to the commencement of the 2013 Act.” There is yet another poser from the court: “ Which provision in the 2013 Act governs a situation where the state has not progressed beyond making a declaration of acquisition; where possession of the land has not been assumed by the state; where neither part nor whole of the compensation has been paid or tendered!”
Business Standard, New Delhi, 31st August 2015
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