SC orders status quo on 189 acres in South Bengaluru

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered status quo on 189 acres of land in Bengaluru’s Vajarahalli and Raghuvanahalli, where about 1,700 sites were carved out by a cooperative housing society and more than 500 houses were built.

A bench of Justices R K Agrawal and M Shantanagoudar issued notice to the state government on a batch of petitions filed by the affected site owners and the housing society against the High Court of Karnataka’s order of April 13.

The court also sought response from the special land acquisition officer, Bangalore City Cooperative Housing Society Limited, Bangalore Development Authority and others on the separate batch of petitions filed by advocates Sanjay M Nuli, Nishanth Patil, S N Bhat, Manish Thakur and B S Srinivas.

A panel of senior counsels including Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Dushyant Dave, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, K V Viswanathan and Basava Prabhu Patil represented the purchasers of the sites and the housing society. Senior advocate P P Rao appeared for the original landowners. Before the counsel could open their arguments, the apex court decided to examine the high court’s judgment that had quashed the entire acquisition of 189.29 acres made pursuant to notification issued in1998 under the Land Acquisition Act.

In their special leave petitions, the site owners, who were not made party before the high court, claimed that the state government and its local authorities such as BBMP have been spending huge sums on development of infrastructure like road, electricity etc and were collecting various taxes from them.

“The HC failed to consider the condition of 1,650 innocent bonafide purchasers of the sites, who have invested their hard earned money to purchase the sites formed in the government acquired land, BDA-approved layout, without having knowledge of internal intricacy in the dealings and with their belief in the principle that ‘King can do no wrong’,” they said.

The site owners further contended that they have brought the plots and constructed houses by putting a lot of hard effort and again they have been asked to pay further compensation for none of their mistakes. More than 50% of the land has been developed. In the judgement observation has been made that Housing Minister M Krishnappa has not paid landlords, though he is not party to this case, their petition said.

The high court had also failed to consider that the apex court had in 1997 dealt with the issue and dismissed the plea made by land owners against acquisition, the petition claimed.