Questioning the change in land use, the Supreme Court on Friday admitted an appeal filed by the Kerala government against a High Court directive to restore lands acquired from resorts in the popular Munnar hill station.
A Bench of Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice A.M. Sapre took on board the State government’s special leave petition, observing that this was a case of some gravity after perusing the documents filed by the State, represented by Supreme Court advocate Nishe Rajen Shonker.
The court acknowledged Mr. Shonker’s arguments that the land parted for the purpose of cardamom cultivation was used to build resorts. The High Court had erred in not applying its mind on this aspect.
State’s contention
The State contended that the High Court, acting on a writ petition, had “patently erred” in deciding the title of the lands in favour of the resort owners as if it was deciding a title dispute case.
The State government argued that the declaration of title in favour of the resort owners was done by the High Court “without verification of any of the relevant documents regarding the issue”.
The State argued that the High Court proceeded to declare the title of the land without paying heed to the circumstance that the question of ownership of the land was pending before a civil court and was the subject of a suit.
Rank trespasser
The State government, which has made several resorts as parties in the apex court litigation, including Munnar Woods and M/s Autumn Woods Resorts (Cloud 9), stuck to its version that the resort’ possession of the land was in the capacity of a “rank trespasser”.
A Division Bench of the High Court had in 2014 directed the State to pay a provisional compensation of ₹10 lakh to Cloud9 Resorts whose 11 buildings at Chinnakkanal had been demolished as part of the Munnar eviction drive launched in 2007 by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.
The directives were issued while allowing a writ petition filed by the resort owner challenging the order issued in 2007 by the then Idukki Collector taking over the land and demolishing the building allegedly on the ground of encroachment and also the order of the Land Revenue Commissioner.
Abuse of power
Awarding a provisional compensation, the court observed that right to property was a Constitutional and legal right. It could not be taken away by the ‘‘abuse of power.” Such abuse of power should be curbed and compensated as otherwise it would result in chaos.
The court had further made it clear that the petitioner could agitate for getting full compensation before the civil court concerned.
