The Karnataka High Court has held that the provision related to lapse of proceedings initiated for acquisition of land under the erstwhile Land Acquisition (LA) Act of 1984, in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency on Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 will apply only to land acquisition processes made under the LA Act, 1984 and not any other enactment, including the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) Act.
“The sub-section (2) of Section 24 of 2013 Act, which creates a new right in the land owners is only to those lands where initiation of acquisition is under the provisions of LA Act, 1984 and not any other enactment. The said section does not apply to those acquisition proceedings, which have been initiated under any other central enactment or State such as BDA Act or KUDA [Karnataka Urban Development Authorities] Act, as the case may be,” the court held.
Justice B.V. Nagarathna made these observations while dismissing some petitions, in which some land-owners have claimed that the process of acquisition of land in Nagarabhavi under the BDA Act in 1978 is ‘deemed to have been lapsed’ due to non-completion of acquisition proceedings in view of Section 24 (2) of the 2013 Act.
The court made it clear that Section 24(2) of the 2013 Act will apply to only to those land acquisition proceedings that are initiated under the LA Act, 1984.
Section 24(2) of the 2013 states that “...notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), in case of land acquisition proceedings initiated under the Land Acquisition Act, 1984, where an award under the said section 11 has been made five years or more prior to the commencement of this Act but the physical possession of the land has not been taken or the compensation has not been paid, the said proceedings shall be deemed to have lapsed and the appropriate government, if it so chooses, shall initiate the proceedings of such land acquisition afresh in accordance with the provisions of this Act.”
Petitioner S. Harish and others had questioned the process, initiated by the BDA to acquire their lands in Nagarabhavi village way back in 1978, on various grounds, including non-completion of acquisition proceedings as defined under Section 24(2) of the 2013 Act.
