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Nagpur Improvement Trust v. M/s Bombaywala

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 69Decided 22 Jan 2019
Civil Appeal No. 937 of 2019
Justice A.K. Sikri · Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice M.R. Shah

Background

A 1964 town-planning Scheme for an area in Nagpur provided for a 15-metre internal road, but later Development Plans prepared under the state's town-planning law (in 1976, 1989 and 2001) did not show this road at all. The Nagpur Improvement Trust eventually sanctioned a building layout and construction permit for the land under the newer Development Plan, and issued notices asking tenants/shopkeepers to vacate portions of their shops to allow construction. Some tenants challenged these demolition notices in the Bombay High Court, which quashed the notices, holding that the older Scheme's 15-metre road requirement still had to be honoured until formally varied. The Trust, the land owners and developers appealed to the Supreme Court; a connected case about the Trust's later move to formally delete the 15-metre road from the Scheme was also before the Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that where a later Development Plan (prepared under the state Act) conflicts with an older Scheme (made under the Trust's own Act), the Development Plan overrides the Scheme, following its own earlier ruling in Manohar Joshi vs. State of Maharashtra. Since the Development Plans from 1976 onward never included the 15-metre road, and nobody had ever challenged those Development Plans on that basis, the construction permits granted consistent with the Development Plan could not be called illegal merely because they departed from the older Scheme. The Court therefore quashed the High Court's judgment and allowed the Trust/developers' appeals (except one, which was dismissed on its own facts), while directing that the objecting tenants be given the same rehabilitation treatment already agreed with other tenants. It also upheld, in the connected transfer case, the Trust's subsequent formal deletion of the 15-metre road from the Scheme, since that had been done through due process consistent with the Development Plan.

Lesson Learnt

When a newer government development plan for an area conflicts with an older local planning scheme, the newer plan generally prevails: citizens and tenants who want to rely on an older scheme's provisions should challenge any newer plan that departs from it at the time it is made, not decades later when construction permits are already granted under the newer plan.

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

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