Banwari And Others Vs Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (HSIIDC) And Another (Supreme Court of India)
Summary: The Supreme Court allowed the landowners’ appeal and restored the Land Acquisition Collector’s order granting them enhanced compensation under Section 28-A of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. The appellants’ land measuring 8 Kanal 17 Marla in village Majri, Tehsil Bahadurgarh, District Jhajjar had been acquired for the Kundli Manesar Palwal Expressway pursuant to a notification under Section 4 dated 17 November 2004. The award dated 1 March 2006 fixed compensation at Rs.12,50,000 per acre. The appellants themselves did not seek a reference under Section 18. However, similarly situated landowners did so, and their reference was dismissed by the Additional District Judge on 17 January 2012. Those landowners then filed RFA No.429 of 2013 before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which on 2 May 2016 enhanced compensation to Rs.19,91,300 per acre with statutory benefits. The appellants filed their Section 28-A application on 30 June 2016, within three months of that High Court judgment.
The LAC accepted the application on 15 September 2020 and granted the same enhanced compensation. HSIIDC successfully challenged that order before the High Court, which relied upon Ramsingbhai (Ramsangbhai) Jerambhai v. State of Gujarat for the proposition that Section 28-A redetermination must ordinarily be founded upon an award of the Reference Court under Part III of the 1894 Act and not upon an appellate judgment under Section 54. Before the Supreme Court, the appellants relied upon the earlier three-Judge Bench judgment in Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari. The Supreme Court examined both three-Judge Bench decisions. It noted that Ramsingbhai had not noticed Pradeep Kumari, which had treated Section 28-A as a beneficial provision enacted to remove inequality in compensation between landowners covered by the same acquisition notification, particularly those unable to pursue a reference under Section 18. Pradeep Kumari held that the right under Section 28-A is not confined to the earliest award and identified six conditions for invoking the provision, including that only one application may be made and that it must be filed within three months of the award on which redetermination is sought. In the present case, the Supreme Court found it undisputed that the appellants’ land and the land involved in RFA No.429 of 2013 were covered by the same acquisition notification, the High Court had awarded compensation exceeding the Collector’s award, the appellants had not sought a reference under Section 18, and their Section 28-A application was filed within three months of the High Court judgment.
