The Madras High Court has ruled that private lands gifted to the government for specific purposes such as establishing schools and hospitals could be reclaimed either by the donors themselves or their legal heirs if the properties had not been used for the intended purpose for long.
Pronouncing the judgment, Justices K.K. Sasidharan and P. Velmurugan directed the State to consider a request made by P. Bagyalakshmi to return 2.5 acres, at Vadakkipalayam village in Pollachi Taluk of Coimbatore district, which had been gifted by her father in 1964 for establishing a school and naming it after him.
The judges pointed out that school education department officials had not disputed the gift deed executed in April 1964 with a specific condition that a school should be constructed there in his name.
They also said that it was a fact that a school in the locality was constructed elsewhere and not on the gifted land.
“The gift of the land was given for a specific purpose. The construction of school building in the name of the donor was the sole object of the gift. There is a marked difference between acquisition of land and the demand for re-conveyance later on account of the failure to utilise the land for the purpose for which it was acquired and a gift of land for a particular public purpose and claim made by the donor for return of land on the ground that the land was not used for the particular purpose for which it was gifted.
“In case it is a compulsory acquisition for a public purpose, the scope of re-conveyance under Section 48-B of the Land Acquisition Act is very limited. However, in a case of this nature, when the purpose of gift failed to materialise, the donor would be justified in claiming the land back,” the judges observed.
