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Laxmikant & Ors. vs. State of Maharashtra & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 336Decided 23 Mar 2022
Civil Appeal No. 1965 of 2022
Hemant Gupta · V. Ramasubramanian

Background

A Latur Development Plan finalised in 2002 had reserved certain land, including a plot the appellants later purchased, for a playground, but the local Municipal Corporation never acquired it. After ten years passed with no acquisition, the appellants served a statutory notice in 2016 asking the authority to buy the land within a year, as the law allows. The Corporation still did not acquire it, so the appellants went to the Bombay High Court, which agreed the reservation had lapsed but controversially gave the Corporation one additional year to acquire the land anyway. The landowners then appealed to the Supreme Court only against that extra one-year window.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that once the statutory ten-year period (plus the additional year after a purchase notice) expires without acquisition, the reservation lapses automatically and courts cannot invent a fresh time limit for the State to acquire the land: that would rewrite the statute. The Court distinguished an earlier precedent where extra time had been granted under Article 142 based on the specific facts of that case, clarifying that such a one-off equitable direction is not a binding legal rule for all cases. Since the land had already been kept out of the owners' use for a decade-plus, allowing an open-ended further extension would unfairly prolong the deprivation. The High Court's direction giving one more year was therefore set aside, and the appeal was allowed.

Lesson Learnt

If the government fails to acquire land reserved for a public purpose within the legally fixed time (and any extension the landowner is required to allow after a purchase notice), the reservation lapses on its own. Courts will not routinely grant the state extra time beyond what the statute permits.

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

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