Government should not be robber of citizens' lands: Karnataka High Court

State should not be robbers of land belonging to citizens, the Karnataka High Court recently said while ordering the government to compensate persons whose lands were used by it for a public project in 2007 without payment of any compensation [MV Guruprasad vs State of Karnataka]..Single-judge Justice Krishna S Dixit while deciding the plea, invoked Saint Augustine, who in his book The City of God (Volume 1, 426 A.D) has said that 'Without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers …?'"The government cannot act as a robber of citizens lands; taking away private lands for the purported public purpose sans compensation militates against the spirit of constitutional guarantee enacted under Article 300A, the fundamental right to property no longer being on the statute book," the judge said in the order passed on February 10.The State and its instrumentalities are constitutionally expected to conduct themselves with fairness and reasonableness in all their actions, the bench added. .The order was passed in a plea challenging a May 2007 notification issued under the provisions of Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Act, 1966. In January 2013, the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) was requested by the petitioners to pass the award and pay compensation but there has been a stony silence on part of the authorities. It was argued that payment of compensation is a pre-condition for sustaining acquisition. Therefore, the plea sought compensation under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act of 2013. .The Court noted that the State had issued a corrigendum notification on June 5, 2014 mentioning the names of the petitioners, thereby, entitling them to payment of compensation. However, compensation has not been paid even to this day and there is no plausible explanation as to why the payment of compensation has been withheld for decade and a half, the Court noted. "Such a conduct reinforces the shackles of a feudalistic attitude from which the transformative character of our Constitution seeks to liberate. Their action in not paying the compensation is not only grossly violative of property rights constitutionally guaranteed under Article 300A but gnaws at overarching objectives of a Welfare State ordained under the Constitution," the judge observed. It hardly needs to be stated that payment of compensation is essential when private property is acquired for public purpose; this mandate is ‘in-built’ in Article 300A, the Court added.It, therefore, ordered the State authorities to pay the compensation to the petitioners as per the provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act 2013.Advocate Veeranna V Tigadi appeared for the petitioners. Advocates Sridhar Hegde and PV Chandrashekhar represented the State authorities..[Read Order]