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Hukam Singh etc. etc. v. State of Haryana and Anr. etc. etc.

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2019 INSC 166Decided 8 Feb 2019
Special Leave Petition (Civil) Nos. 4354-4358 of 2019
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud

Background

This matter arose out of a batch of land acquisition compensation cases from Haryana, where the Supreme Court had earlier (11 January 2019) decided the market value payable to landowners in Civil Appeal Nos. 264-270 of 2019 (Wazir and Another vs State of Haryana) and connected matters, including the petitioners here. After that judgment, the landowners (including Hukam Singh) filed applications pointing out that the judgment contained factual errors in a tabular chart of sale deeds and, more importantly, arithmetical mistakes in calculating the per-acre compensation figures for several villages, and sought recall of the judgment.

Decision Breakdown

The Court rejected the landowners' request to recall the judgment itself, holding that the tabular chart was simply reproduced from the High Court's own findings (never challenged earlier) and that an unrelated case's 8%-vs-15% interest figure had no bearing on this judgment's reasoning. However, the Court agreed that it had made genuine arithmetical errors in computing compensation (for example, an incorrect subtraction turning Rs. 48.66 lakh into Rs. 37.54 lakh instead of the correct Rs. 39.54 lakh per acre), and corrected these figures throughout the judgment for each affected village (Naharpur Kasan, Kasan, Bas Kusla, Bas Haria, Dhana, and Manesar). It also clarified that landowners who had already been paid more than their corrected entitlement must refund the excess by 30 June 2019, with 9% interest applying only if not refunded by that date. All the miscellaneous applications were accordingly disposed of, with the modified figures to be reflected in a corrected, re-uploaded version of the original judgment.

Lesson Learnt

Even a Supreme Court judgment can contain genuine arithmetical slips, and parties who spot a computational error (as opposed to disagreeing with the Court's reasoning) have a limited avenue to seek correction, but a correction request is not a backdoor to reargue the merits already decided.

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

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