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Bijender & Ors. v. State of Haryana

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 1058Decided 27 Oct 2017
Civil Appeal No. 2846 of 2017
Justice R.K. Agrawal · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

This appeal (C.A. No. 2846 of 2017, Bijender & Ors.) was the lead appeal in a shared judgment covering well over a hundred connected civil appeals, all arising from land acquired in Safidon, Jind district (Haryana) for HUDA's residential and commercial sectors; the judgment expressly draws its facts from this specific appeal and finally decides it along with the rest. A Land Acquisition Collector had fixed compensation rates, which the High Court partly enhanced on reference, awarding a higher rate for land near certain roads and of a particular classification, and a separate, lower rate for land beyond a specified depth. The landowners appealed to the Supreme Court seeking still higher compensation, relying on various sale deeds of smaller plots in the area.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the sale deeds the landowners relied on could not be directly applied, since they were of small plots measured in square yards while the acquired land measured in hundreds of acres, comparing the two kinds of transactions without adjustment was not sound valuation practice. Even so, after weighing the land's location, surroundings, development potential, and the evidence as a whole, the Court independently fixed higher per-acre rates than the High Court had, raising one category from Rs. 33 lakh to Rs. 45 lakh per acre, and the other from Rs. 24.75 lakh to Rs. 35 lakh per acre, while upholding the statutory benefits already granted. The appeals were allowed in part, with the enhanced rates applying across all the connected appeals as well.

Lesson Learnt

In land acquisition compensation disputes, courts will not mechanically apply the per-unit price of small individual plots to a large acquired tract, but they will still independently assess a fair market rate from the totality of evidence: landowners seeking enhancement need more than isolated small-plot sale deeds to support a claimed rate.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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