Even as the Bhatta Parsaul land acquisition controversy refuses to die down, the Supreme Court has laid down guidelines for fixing of the compensation to the farmers preferably on the basis of hard evidence about the market value of their land rather than the “guesstimated” price.
The methodology of guesswork though was an accepted norm in the law to decide the award in cases like insurance, taxation and accident claims but its application in the land cases has to be with far greater care and caution otherwise any acquisition based on “guesstimated” price might result in injustice, a bench of Justices A.K. Gangulay and Swatanter Kumar held.
“Guesswork has to be used with greater element of caution and within the determinants of the law declared by legislature or by the courts from time to time... whatever methods of determining the compensation is applied, its result should always be reasonable, just and fair as that is the purpose sought to be achieved under the scheme of the Land Acquisition Act,” the top court said.
“For attaining that purpose, application of some guesswork may be necessary but this principle would have hardly any application in case of no evidence, in other words, where the parties have not brought on record any evidence, then compensation cannot merely be decided on the basis of imagination and conjuncture,” the bench held while emphasising on fixing the award as far as possible on the basis of revenue evidence available on the market value of the land.
The court said the guesswork could only be resorted to in a situation where the evidence produced by farmers as well as the government were not “sufficient” to determine the award with “exactitude”. “All guesstimated compensation has to be reasonable and should have a connection to the data on record produced by the parties by way of evidence,” the court said.
But it was made clear that the entire exercise of awarding of the compensation has to be in conformity with Sections 23 and 24 of Land Acquisition Act, which emphasises more on fixing of the award on the basis of the market value at the time of publication of acquisition notification by the authorities. The ruling came on acquisition of land by the UP government way back in 1991-92 for projects in Dehra Dun before creation of Uttarakhand and the SC had framed four questions for determining the issue.
These include; whether belting system would apply to club together all types of acquired land for deciding the award, what should be the just and fair market value of the land on the date of notification, whether any deduction is allowed from the fixed award for a land of lesser market value and what other added benefit could be given to the farmers.
At the same time, court cautioned against fixation of the compensation on the bases of “orchestrated” market value with the farmers resorting to registration of sale deeds at a price much higher than the actual prevailing rates just before acquisition notification is issued in anticipation that their land would be falling within the project area.