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Kalyani (Dead) Through LRs. & Ors. vs. The Sulthan Bathery Municipality & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 478Decided 26 Apr 2022
Civil Appeal No. 3189 of 2022
Dinesh Maheshwari · Vikram Nath · S. Abdul Nazeer as the second judge

Background

The appellants, farmers owning about 1.7 hectares of agricultural land near Sulthan Bathery in Kerala, allowed their land to be used for constructing/widening a bypass road after the local Panchayat assured them compensation. The road was built (completed around 2010), but no compensation was ever paid despite repeated written representations starting in 2011. When their pleas went unanswered, the appellants approached the Kerala High Court in 2014.

Decision Breakdown

A Single Judge of the High Court had ruled in the appellants' favour, directing the District Collector to fix compensation, but a Division Bench reversed this, holding that the appellants had failed to prove they were promised compensation and that the land was voluntarily surrendered free of cost. The Supreme Court restored the Single Judge's order, holding that the Division Bench wrongly placed the burden of proof on the landowners. Since the Panchayat/Municipality was the party benefiting from the land and claiming it was a free voluntary surrender, it was for the Panchayat, not the farmers, to produce documentary proof of that voluntary surrender, and it produced none. Depriving citizens of their property without following any legal process (no acquisition, no transfer deed, no proven voluntary surrender) violates Article 300A of the Constitution, and since it was their agricultural livelihood, also implicated Article 21.

Lesson Learnt

When the government or a local body takes a citizen's land for a public project without formal acquisition papers, it is the authority's burden, not the citizen's, to prove the land was given up voluntarily and without any promise of payment. Absent such proof, the landowner remains entitled to compensation.

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

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