MTHL project: Bombay High Court orders revised compensation to 20 landowners under Land Acquisition Act 2013

The Bombay High Court recently ordered that revised compensation be paid to twenty villagers whose lands were acquired for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Sea Link (MTHL) Project which was inaugurated on January 12 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi [Sandesh Vitthal Thakur & Ors. v. The Deputy Collector (Land Acquisition) Raigad & Ors.]..A division bench of Justices BP Colabawalla and MM Sathaye observed that the land acquisition proceedings, which had been initiated under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, had lapsed due to non-compliance with the statutory procedures. The Court, therefore, directed the State land acquisition authorities to grant a fresh compensation award by following the norms under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013..The Court noted that the petitioners (landowners) had handed over the possession of their respective lands to the government as they did not want to thwart an important project for the city and were only looking for compensation after the passing of an award under the 2013 Act. The Court emphasized that possession of the acquired lands will not be reverted to the petitioners and the State government should carry out the procedure for assessing the compensation expeditiously. "The petitioners will only be entitled to compensation for their lands which shall be determined by the State by passing a fresh Award after following the procedure and the provisions as laid down under the 2013 Act. The State shall carry out this process as expeditiously as possible, especially considering that the Petitioners have lost their valuable property quite some time back and yet haven’t received any compensation," the Court's January 16 judgment said..The acquisition proceedings for the seven hectares (collectively) of land owned by the petitioners had been initiated under the 1894 Act. The land acquisition authorities had also invoked the urgency clause due to which no enquiry took place prior to the acquisition.Following this, a statutory declaration demarcating the land acquired for the public project came to be published in the official gazette on December 22, 2012. The compensation award (challenged in the present petition) came to be passed on April 22, 2015.The Court noted that this compensation award had been passed two years after the 2013 Act had been enforced, that is, on January 1, 2014.On the other hand, according to the 2013 Act, if no award is passed in proceedings arising from the 1894 Act, then an award has to be passed within one year from January 1, 2014..The reason why such an award could not be passed earlier was attributed to a stay order passed by the Aurangabad bench of the High Court. A 2014 notification concerning market rate calculation for land acquired under the Land Acquisition Act had been stayed for 79 days by the Aurangabad Bench. The Supreme Court ruled that this period of 79 days cannot be included for calculating the time to pass the award and the compensation award had to be passed by March 20, 2015.Since the award was passed on April 22, 2015 with a delay of over a month, the Court concluded that the acquisition proceedings had clearly lapsed..In addition to this, the Court also found that the State government had failed to follow the conditions stipulated after invoking the urgency clause.For the clause to become operative, 80 percent of the estimated compensation was required to be paid to the persons interested in that land, after which the government could take possession. Only then would the land be vested with the government.In the present case, none of these conditions had been complied with until after the award was passed. This was also a ground to hold that the earlier land acquisition proceedings had lapsed. "Though the urgency clause was invoked, until the passing of the Award, no compensation (estimated or otherwise) was paid to the Petitioners and neither possession of the lands was taken till the filing of the above Petitions. In the facts of the present case admittedly there has been no compliance of Section 17(3-A) and once this is the case, the land does not vest absolutely with the State and hence if the Award is not passed within the time frame as stipulated by law, the acquisition would lapse," the Court held..[Read Judgment]