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Loveleen Kumar Etc. v. State of Haryana & Ors. (and connected appeals)

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 527Decided 16 May 2018
Civil Appeal Nos. 5261-5263 of 2018
Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar

Background

The State of Haryana acquired about 229 acres of land at Hansi for a residential-cum-commercial development in 2005. The Reference Court enhanced compensation to about Rs.48,40,000 per acre, and the High Court enhanced it further to roughly Rs.2,01,97,320 per acre, basing its calculation almost entirely on a 10-year-old Supreme Court decision (Smt. Ashrafi vs. State of Haryana) concerning a small, nearby commercial plot acquired back in 1995, while largely ignoring a set of contemporaneous sale deeds that the State had placed on record. Both the landowners and the State appealed to the Supreme Court, each unhappy with different aspects of the compensation fixed.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred by relying almost solely on the decade-old Ashrafi acquisition, which involved a much smaller, differently-purposed plot, as a yardstick for annual escalation, especially since precedent cautions that relying on sale instances/acquisitions more than about four to five years old is generally unsafe. It further held that the High Court failed to properly consider the sale deeds produced by the State, which were directly relevant and could not simply be disregarded without reasons. Because the compensation exercise was not properly grounded in the actual evidence on record, the Court set aside the High Court's judgment and remitted the matter back to the High Court to redetermine compensation afresh on the existing evidence, disposing of all the appeals before it (including both the landowners' and the State's cross-appeals) and directing the High Court to decide the matter as early as possible.

Lesson Learnt

In land acquisition compensation disputes, courts cannot lean on an old, dissimilar comparable sale/acquisition (especially one from a decade or more earlier) while brushing aside more recent and directly relevant sale-deed evidence actually placed on record by the parties: compensation must be grounded in the real evidence specific to each case.

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

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