Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has come down heavily on the state government and CIDCO for arbitrarily invoking the urgency clause under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to acquire land for Navi Mumbai International Airport.
The court quashed the Section 6 declaration issued on May 20, 2015, and the subsequent award dated July 7, 2017, deeming the acquisition illegal. Section 6 allows the government to declare land required for a public purpose.
The HC was hearing petitions by agriculturists from Vahal village, Panvel, Raigad, whose land was acquired for ancillary works, including a sewage treatment plant. However, the authorities failed to justify bypassing the mandatory inquiry under Section 5A, which grants affected landowners the right to be heard.
A bench of Justices MS Sonak and Jitendra Jain stated, “No material is produced to justify the alleged invocation of urgency. None of the affidavits explain or give any reasons for it,” the HC observed.
The court noted that neither CIDCO nor the state government could produce any notification or direction invoking urgency. “There can be no deemed invocation of urgency. Either it is invoked after due record of satisfaction and application of mind, or it is not,” the court ruled, criticising the authorities for handling the matter with ‘casualness or ambiguity.’
Citing a Supreme Court judgment, the HC reaffirmed that landowners have a fundamental right to be heard before their land is forcibly acquired. “This right must be meaningful and not a sham,” it emphasised.
The HC found that the agriculturists had filed objections within the stipulated time under Section 5A, but their objections were ignored, and no hearing was granted. The court held this violated natural justice and fair play.
It also highlighted contradictions in the government’s claim of urgency, noting nearly two years had passed between the Section 4 notification (December 7, 2013) and the Section 6 declaration (May 20, 2015).
Additionally, it took 13 months to publish the Section 4 notification in the village. “Even excluding post-notification delay, almost two years is sufficient to infer no real urgency,” the court remarked.
State’s advocate AI Patel failed to confirm whether any urgency notification under Section 17(4) had been issued. The state did not produce the document, but Patel argued that since the Section 6 declaration referred to an urgency notification, “There must have been some such notification.” The HC rejected this, ruling that urgency provisions cannot be presumed without proof.
CIDCO’s counsel GS Hegde argued the acquisition was for a ‘laudable purpose’ of developing a township and dismissed the petitioners’ objections as ‘technical pleas.’ He claimed hearings under Section 5A were unnecessary since the township was in the public interest.
The HC rejected this, emphasising that compliance with Section 5A is a statutory requirement. “Since a challenge was raised, the respondents had to justify invoking urgency by filing a proper affidavit with relevant material,” the court stated.
The HC ruled the urgency clause invocation unlawful and quashed the Section 6 declaration and subsequent award.
While it did not quash the Section 4 notification, it left open the question of compensation should the government proceed with acquisition legally. The court also noted CIDCO’s claim of possessing the land was contradicted by its own application seeking vacation of interim relief granted to the petitioners in 2018.
The state sought a stay on the order, but the court refused, stating that granting a stay would undo the interim protection given to the petitioners since 2018.
