Constitutional Validity of Land Acquisition Act:
The CPR Land Rights Initiative was created in November 2014 as an institutional space for building systematic knowledge on land rights issues. The Initiative currently houses research projects on the constitutional right to property, land acquisition, and land rights in the Scheduled Areas. The constitutional right to property project is reviewing the chequered trajectory of the right to property in the Indian Constitution, from its inclusion as a fundamental right in 1950, through numerous amendments and ultimately its abolition as a fundamental right, and inclusion as a constitutional right in 1978.
The LARR Act provides certain procedures to be followed by the State government in order to make the land acquisition constitutionally valid. The procedure begins with serving preliminary notification to the affected party ends after providing proper rehabilitation and resettlement measures to them.
In Habib Ahmed v. State of Uttar Pradesh, the Court held that neither the notification nor the declaration can be quashed on the ground that there was no necessity for acquiring the land for a public purpose. Whether the land is required for a public purpose or not has to be decided solely by the State Government. The Court observed that it is duty of Court to determine whenever question is raised whether acquisition is or not for public purpose. However, prima facie Government is the best judge as to whether acquisition is for public purpose. But it is not sole judge].
The land acquisition can be held valid constitutionally only if it satisfies the criteria of public purpose and along with paying compensation to the affected families.
Our constitution makers were greatly influenced by the Western doctrine of eminent domain and they incorporated the right to property as a fundamental right under Article 19(l) (f) and element of public purpose and compensation in Article 31 (2). It was also felt that some of the principles laid down in Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) which had its influence in the governance of the country, would not be achieved if those articles were literally interpreted and applied. The DPSP lay down the fundamental principles for the governance of the country, and through those principles, the state is directed to secure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to sub serve the common good and that the operation of the legal system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment. Further it was also noticed that the Fundamental rights are not absolute but subject to law of reasonable restrictions in the interest of the general public to achieve the above objectives specifically to eliminate zamindari system.
Article 31 of the Constitution enshrined the requirements of public purpose, procedure, and compensation that condition the exercise of the state’s eminent domain power into constitutional protections. However, Article 31 too proved to be fertile ground for political and legal contestation, and suffered numerous amendments, before its abolition as a fundamental right by the Constitution (Forty Fourth Amendment) Act, 1978. The same amendment however, inserted Article 300A in the Constitution. Article 300A provided that no person shall be deprived of his or her property without the authority of a valid law, thereby deleting the requirements of public purpose and compensation from the text of the Constitution.
The Constitution created a federal political structure with a unitary bias. The Seventh Schedule to the Constitution distributed legislative powers between the union and the states, while outlining the “concurrent” jurisdiction of both the union and the states in certain cases. “Land” is a “state” subject, that is, it falls within the legislative domain of states within India’s federal system.15 As a result, and there exist widely differentiated legal regimes governing land rights of various categories of individuals and groups across states. However, the “acquisition and requisitioning of property” is a subject in the Concurrent List.
There is a strong presumption in favour of the constitutional validity of statutes, deriving from the fact that Parliament, comprised of the people’s elected representatives, must only enact laws that are in compliance with the Constitution. Therefore, a challenge to the constitutional validity of the statute is an assertion that Parliament has failed in its constitutional duty to abide by the rule of law as outlined in the constitutional text.