M J Antony: Fertile ground for litigation

Agricultural land should be the last to be acquired

Though land acquisition is a burning issue, it has gone off the parliamentary radar. The proposed Bill is not among the 31 listed for discussion in the current session. The smouldering issue comes alive only when high courts or the Supreme Court deliver a thumping judgment against a state government. Uttar Pradesh is still smarting from the Allahabad High Court’s orders. In the Supreme Court, land acquisition has been one subject on which the maximum number of lengthy judgments has been delivered this year.

Last week also saw two significant judgments on this theme. One of them started with quotations from John Stuart Mill, Jawaharlal Nehru (“everything else can wait, but not agriculture”) and M S Swaminathan. They stressed the importance of land, availability and productiveness of which are limited.

“Unfortunately,” the Supreme Court said, “those words of wisdom appear to have become irrelevant for the state apparatus which has used the Land Acquisition Act 1894 in the last two decades for massive acquisition of agricultural land which has not only adversely impacted the farmers but also generated huge litigation. Adjudication consumes substantial time of the courts. Land owners are compelled to file cases with the hope that by court intervention they will be able to save their land.” (Raghbir Singh vs State of Haryana).

After going through the labyrinth of facts in the case, including a signature forged in the office of the land acquisition collector to take away agricultural land for industries, the court made some incisive observations of general nature born out of its experience. In the recent past, the court said, various state governments and their functionaries have adopted a “very casual approach” in dealing with matters relating to acquisition of land in rural areas. In a large number of cases, the notifications and consequential actions have been nullified by courts on the grounds of violation of mandatory procedure and the rules of natural justice.

The disposal of cases filed by land owners and others take some time and the resultant delay has great adverse impact on the implementation of projects of public importance, the judgment pointed out. The delay in deciding such cases may not be of much significance when the state and its agencies want to confer benefits upon private parties by acquiring land in the name of public purpose. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate as to why the state and its instrumentalities resort to massive acquisition of land and that too without complying with the mandate of the statute.”

Commenting on farmer suicides, the court attributed it to the inadequate investment in rural areas after Independence. Those engaged in agriculture have not been educated and empowered to adopt alternative sources of livelihood if their land is acquired. “Not only the current, but the future generations are also ruined and this is one of the reasons why the farmers are deprived of their holdings commit suicide,” the court remarked and added that “it is wholly unjust, arbitrary and unreasonable to deprive such persons of their houses in the name of development of infrastructure or industrialisation.”

In order to avoid such enormous tragedies, the court set forth some rules. Before acquiring private land, the state should use land belonging to it for specified public purpose. Only if it becomes absolutely necessary should the authorities acquire private land, that, too, complying with the statutory provisions and rules of natural justice, like giving adequate opportunity to the land owner to oppose the move.

The other judgment of the week highlighted one of the staple themes of land acquisition disputes, namely the rate of compensation (Chandrashekar vs Land Acquisition Officer). Along with determination of public purpose and denial of hearing to the land losers, calculation of market value of the land has been the most nettlesome task for courts. Though the Supreme Court has earlier set down standards in several judgments, the authorities and courts below tend to forget arithmetic on this score. The time consumed in litigation is enormous. In this case, the acquisition notification by Gulbarga Development Authority was passed in 1982. Disputes started immediately thereafter, and they travelled up the ladder of courts and reached finality only last week. The court evolved a formula that took into account such complex issues as escalation and de-escalation, rate of deduction, quality and neighbourhood of the land.

Such judicial improvisations only help create fertile ground for more litigation, especially in the absence of a comprehensive legislation tuned in to the needs of present times. Many land owners are dead before their claims are finally laid to rest in the Supreme Court. Those who get monetary compensation are not competent enough to handle such huge amounts. The cash is frittered away, with evil social consequences. That is why the distress is often written in blood.