The Area Hospital at Bhongir.
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has held that a government authority cannot indefinitely hold on to private property without following due legal process, merely because the land has already been put to public use. It directed the state to formally acquire land it used to build the Area Hospital at Bhongir and pay compensation to the owners.
Justice Vakiti Ramakrishna Reddy held that the public purpose served by the hospital could not excuse the state from its constitutional obligation under Article 300-A, the provision that protects a person’s right to property by requiring that no one be deprived of it except through lawful procedure, to either acquire the land properly or compensate its owners.
“The public purpose underlying the utilisation of the land cannot dispense with the constitutional obligation to acquire the land in accordance with law or to compensate the owner. The constitutional guarantee under Article 300-A operates irrespective of the nature of the public purpose,” the court noted.
It noted that the state had not disputed that the hospital stood on the land, and that since the land had been permanently put to use for a public institution, the owners were not seeking to get it back but asking only for fair compensation, which the court called the only realistic constitutional remedy available in the circumstances.
“The admitted failure of the respondents to initiate acquisition proceedings cannot be permitted to defeat the petitioners’ constitutional entitlement. A public authority cannot retain private property indefinitely without the sanction of law merely because the property has already been utilised for a public purpose. Such a course would be plainly inconsistent with Article 300-A and the rule of law,” the High Court added.
The petitioners’ claim traced back to a sale of the property through an unregistered document dated March 16, 1978. Since the sale had not been formally registered, the buyer sought to have it validated under Section 5-A of the Andhra Pradesh Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act, 1971, which allows allows old, unregistered land transactions to be legally recognised on payment of the shortfall in stamp duty.
The Revenue Divisional Officer at Bhongir validated the transaction through proceedings dated March 19, 1982, and fixed the deficit stamp duty payable. Once this was paid, the revenue records were updated to reflect the change in ownership and the petitioners’ names continued to appear as owners in official land records.
Despite this, the state had used the land to build the Area Hospital without initiating formal acquisition proceedings or paying any compensation, prompting the petitioners to approach the High Court.
This post was last modified on August 19, 2026 3:18 pm