IMPORTANT POINTS
Urgency provision in Land Acquisition Act merely defers passing of award. It does not dispense it with.
If a statute prescribes the manner in which an action is to be performed, it must be carried out strictly in consonance thereto or not at all.
Tendering payment of eighty per cent of the estimated compensation to the person interested in compensation for such land is prerequisite for invoking section 17.
Ratio decidendi discussed.
There is distinction between setting aside of an acquisition and the reversion of possession.

Judgment

Vikramajit Sen, J.

1. The legal nodus that we are called upon to unravel in this Appeal is whether the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (L.A. Act for brevity) as amended from time to time, requires an Award to be passed even in respect of lands expropriated by the State pursuant to the exercise of special powers in cases of urgency contained in Section 17 thereof. It is indeed ironical that what was, as far back as in 1987, perceived as an imperative, urgent and exigent necessity, justifying the steamrolling of the rights of citizens, has proved substantially to be a fallow and ill-conceived requirement even after the passage of three decades; till date, tracts of the acquired land remain unutilized; the initially declared purpose of construction of residential quarters for State officials having novated to portions of the land being used as helipads for ‘State Dignitaries’. We must not forget that even though ownership of property has ceased to be conceived of as a Fundamental Right, it continues to receive Constitutional protection. It is also the regrettable reality that Governments are increasingly relying on rulings of this Court to the effect that even if the public purpose providing the predication for the compulsory acquisition of a citizen’s land has proved to be an illusion or misconception, another purpose can conveniently be discovered or devised by the State for retention by it of the expropriated land. Our opinion intends to insulate genuinely urgent projects from lapsing and not to annihilate the constitutional rights of the individual from the might of the State even though it transgresses the essence of the statute. It has become alarmingly commonplace for lands to be expropriated under the banner of urgency or even under the normal procedure, only to be followed by a withdrawal or retraction from this exercise enabling a favoured few to harvest the ill-begotten windfall. The ambivalence or cleavage of opinion of this Court in Delhi Airtech Services (P) Ltd. vs. State of U.P. (2011) 9 SCC 354 on the necessity to pay the erstwhile owners of land of even its unilaterally assessed value has emboldened and spurred the State into contending before us that no sooner the urgency mantra is mouthed, no other provision of the L.A. Act has any relevance or efficacy, including the legal necessity of passing an Award.

2. We shall succinctly narrate the salient facts of the Appeal before us. The State Government had by means of Notification No.2/86-87 dated 18.11.1987 and 3/86-87 dated 18.11.1987 initiated steps for acquiring tracts of lands in Mouza Sansarpur and in Hardas Chak. These Notifications had simultaneously excluded the provisions of Section 5A of the L.A. Act from applying to the acquired lands, which, because of the significance of its language, is reproduced below:

“This Notification is hereby issued under the provisions of section 4 of the Bihar Act No.11, 1961 as amended Act No.1, 1894 for those persons who are concerned with it.

The map of the above land can be seen in the office of the Land Acquisition Officer, Khagaria. Government of Bihar do hereby authorize the Land Acquisition Officer, Khagaria and his staff and the office bearers of the Executive Engineer Bhawan Nirman Khagaria in the preliminary investigation of this project that they should conduct the survey of the land after entering it and they are directed to all the acts specified under section 2 of the Section 4 of the above Act.

And whereas it is the opinion of the Governor of Bihar that the above mentioned barren land/agricultural land and its part thereof is necessary for immediate acquisition. Therefore, it is directed under sub section 4 of the section 17 of the above Act that the provisions of the section 5A of the above act shall not apply to the above land/lands”.

3. This first Notification under Section 4 came to be followed by subsequent Notifications, lucidly illustrating the understanding of the Respondent State that the preceding Noti