The Supreme Court has ruled the government cannot adopt a 'pick and choose' method to acquire private land as it would be violative of constitutional 'right to equality.'
"The government has obligation of acting with substantial fairness and consistency in considering the representations of the landowners for withdrawal from acquisition whose land have been acquired under the same acquisition proceedings.
"The state government cannot pick and chose some land- owners and release their land from acquisiton and deny the same benefit to other land owners by creating artificial distinction," a bench of Justices D K Jain and R M Lodha said in a judgement.
The apex court made the remarks while upholding a batch of special leave petitions of aggrieved landowners who challenged the acquistion proceedings of Haryana government's Urban Development Authority at Naranaul between 1992-93.
The bench said such illegal proceedings are liable to be struck down as it would otherwise give an impression that only those with the 'right contacts with right persons' would get favours from the government.
The authorities had acquired 173.01 acres of land belonging to private owners. Later, exercising its powers under Section 48 of the Land Acquisition Act, the authorities released land back to 40-odd owners by adopting the pick and choose method.
The Punjab and Harayan high court upheld the acquisition proceeding, after which some of the aggrieved land owners appealed in the apex court.
Upholding the appeal, the apex court said perusual of the records clearly indicated that the government did not adopt any rational policy while acquiring the land and releasing back the same selectively to some persons.
The apex court said as a matter of fact, land of more than 40 landowners out of the same acquisition proceedings have been released by the state government under Section 48 of the Act without justifiable reasons.
"Some of the release orders have been passed in respect of landowners who had not challenged the acquisition proceedings and some of them had challenged the acquisition proceedings before the high court and whose cases were not recommended by joint inspection committee for withdrawal from acquisition and whose writ petitons were dismissed.
"Some of these landowners had only vacant plots of land and there was no construction at all. In most of these cases, the award has been passed and, thereafter, the state government has withdrawn from acquisition," the apex court pointed out.
The bench said the government was unable to explain any clear-cut policy for acquiring or selectively thereafter releasing the properties of some persons while ignoring the claim of others nor was it willing to admit that it had committed illegality by giving relief to certain select individuals.
