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Delhi Development Authority vs Rajan Sood & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 362Decided 29 Mar 2022
Civil Appeal No. 1927 of 2022
M.R. Shah · B.V. Nagarathna

Background

Land belonging to the respondents had been acquired decades earlier under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. The respondents filed a writ petition claiming that since neither possession had been taken from them nor compensation paid, the acquisition should be treated as having "lapsed" under Section 24(2) of the 2013 Act, relying on the Supreme Court's earlier ruling in Pune Municipal Corporation v. Harakchand Misirimal Solanki. The Delhi High Court agreed and declared the acquisition lapsed. The DDA and the Delhi government appealed, arguing that possession had in fact been taken in 1986 (with a panchnama drawn) and compensation had been tendered to the recorded owner and deposited with the government, and also pointing out that the Pune Municipal Corporation precedent relied upon by the High Court had since been overruled by a five-judge Constitution Bench in Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court applied the Constitution Bench's clarified law from Indore Development Authority, under which a deemed lapse under Section 24(2) requires that authorities failed to take possession AND failed to pay compensation for five years or more before the 2013 Act came into force, and, crucially, any period during which a court's interim stay order was operative must be excluded from that five-year computation. The Court found that the Delhi High Court itself had earlier passed an interim order in 2011 restraining the authority from taking any coercive action regarding the land, and this stay remained in force (since the respondents' related application was never decided) right up to when the 2013 Act commenced. Because that stay period had to be excluded from the five-year count, the statutory conditions for a deemed lapse were not met, regardless of the disputed factual questions about possession and compensation. The Court therefore set aside the High Court's judgment and held that the acquisition proceedings had not lapsed, allowing DDA's appeals with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

A landowner cannot claim that stalled acquisition proceedings have automatically "lapsed" for non-payment or non-possession if a court's own stay order was operative during the relevant period: time covered by an injunction against government action does not count against the government when calculating the statutory lapse period.

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

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