Statsguru: Legal hurdles in land acquisition

As many as 280 cases have landed in the Supreme Court under the LARR Act of 2013 in the past 3 years

The issue of land acquisition is once again flaring up. As many as 280 cases have landed in the Supreme Court under the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act of 2013 in the past three years, says a study by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). 

Of these, 200 cases involved the Delhi Development Authority alone. Surprisingly, the Supreme Court has invalidated acquisition in 94.6 per cent of these cases, as shown in chart 1.  

The CPR study shows that appeals to the apex court on land acquisition under various laws have surged in the first part of this decade. As shown in chart 2, 258 appeals were filed between 2010 and 2015. By comparison, between 2000 and 2009, 254 cases were filed. The largest number of appeals filed were during 1990 to 1999. 

Six states — Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Delhi — account for 73 per cent of all litigation before the Supreme Court over the last 60 years, as shown in chart 3. 

Compared to the speed with which the Supreme Court has decided on cases under the LARR, the average time taken between the initiation of land acquisition proceedings and the Supreme Court judgment is around 20 years, as seen in chart 4. 

Over two-thirds of these cases, as shown in chart 5, involved parties who contested the calculation and payment of the market value for the land, whether in terms of the principle on which such calculation was made, or the manner in which it was paid, or both. The legitimacy of these appeals can be seen from the fact that in 86.5 per cent of these cases courts increased the compensation awarded by the government (chart 6).