High Court quashes land acquisition for Kempegowda Layout

The High Court has quashed the acquisition of over 4,000 acres of land by Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for the formation of Nadaprabhu Kempegowda Layout (NPL) on grounds that the process is flawed.

In a recent judgement that will provide relief to hundreds of land owners, fighting to save their land acquired by the BDA, Justice Anand Byra Reddy has quashed the acquisition of land spread across twelve villages in two hoblis of  Kengeri and Yeshwanthpur.

Quashing the acquisition of 4,043 acres of land for the layout, Justice Reddy observed that in the absence of an approval for the final scheme, the BDA could not have authorised such a massive acquisition.

Holding that the entire land acquisition process is bad in law, the Court quashed both the preliminary notification dated May 21, 2008 and final notification dated February, 18, 2010.

 Stating that the acquisition proceedings have lapsed and the same have been kept in abeyance by the interim order of this court, the Court said: "The further proceedings were stayed by this court's interim order. The effect of that order have to be kept in view.

Any restraint imposed by courts on any ongoing acquisition would extend to all aspects of the process," the order says.

In the order dated July 11, 2014, pronounced from Gulbarga Circuit bench, the Court expressed its shock that the State government approved such a scheme where the BDA was authorised to acquire the land and observed, "BDA is not an acquiring authority, the State government is. It is therefore impermissible for BDA to authorise land acquisition officer BDA to exercise powers under Section 4 (2) of Land Acquisition Act. It is the State which should acquire the land and determine the compensation.It is evident that large swathes of land has been given up from acquisition and it is not clarified whether the percentage declared are valid and tenable.It is also not that all land holders are farmers and all the 4,000 acres acquired is uniform in nature and is of same value. It is therefore shocking that the State government approved this scheme."

The Court also expressed surprise as to how the BDA could presume that the land losers are farmers and announce that 40 percent of the developed land would be given to them in exchange of the acquired land.

“The BDA is clearly off bounds. Even compensation in kind would be offered and even to specify percentage of acquired land that would be compensated for returning developed land of any particular extent.

This initiative of BDA is not contemplated in Section 16 of BDA Act which specifies particulars for development scheme.

The BDA will hardly be in a position to determine percentage of land use without addressing process of representations ,” Justice Reddy said in his over 300-page order.

The BDA project had aimed at allocating 54,000 sites. The BDA in its preliminary notification planned to acquire 4,814 acres in 2008, but reduced it to 4,043 acres in final notification in 2010.

It cited as farm lands, nurseries and other activities for excluding over 700 acres of land.

The same was challenged by hundreds of farmers.