G. Mohan Rao & Ors. v. The State of Tamil Nadu & Ors.
Background
Landowners had earlier succeeded in getting courts to quash certain land acquisitions carried out by Tamil Nadu under its own pre-2013 acquisition laws, on the ground that those laws were inconsistent ("repugnant") with the central Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Act, 2013. In response, the Tamil Nadu legislature passed a 2019 Act retrospectively reviving and validating its earlier state laws, deliberately dating the revival to a day before the central 2013 Act came into force. The landowners challenged this 2019 Act as an unconstitutional attempt by the legislature to overturn a judicial verdict.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that a legislature is permitted to retrospectively cure the specific legal defect, here, repugnancy with central law, that had caused a court to invalidate earlier legislation, as long as it does so by genuinely changing the law's foundation rather than simply declaring the court's judgment wrong. Since the 2019 Act removed the conflict with the central Act by validly operating within the legislature's constitutional competence under Article 254, it did not amount to an impermissible legislative override of the judiciary. The Court therefore upheld the 2019 Act and dismissed the writ petitions, while leaving other grounds of challenge (such as equality arguments) open for the landowners to raise in other pending proceedings.
Lesson Learnt
A legislature can validly reverse the practical effect of an adverse court ruling by retrospectively fixing the actual legal flaw that caused the ruling (such as a conflict with another law), but it cannot simply legislate away a judicial decision it disagrees with.