Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court set aside land acquired for a resettlement zone under the Mid Manair Reservoir Project in Rajanna Sircilla district, holding that having a genuine public purpose does not by itself justify denying landowners their legal right to object before acquisition.
Justice Vakiti Ramakrishna Reddy held that under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, landowners are ordinarily entitled to an inquiry where they can raise objections before their land is formally acquired. The government can skip this step only in genuinely urgent cases, by separately invoking a specific “urgency” provision. Merely citing a public purpose is not enough to justify doing so, the court said.
The case was filed by Kusa Lachi Reddy and others, whose land was earmarked for the resettlement zone after a preliminary notice in January 2008 and a formal declaration in March 2008. They said they were denied the chance to object.
What the govt argued
The state argued the acquisition was urgent and that objection notices had in fact been issued, though the petitioners denied receiving them. The High Court found the state’s own case contradictory. Its written reply claimed the urgency provision was never invoked, yet the official government notification specifically recorded its use.
It also noted that invoking urgency powers does not automatically waive the right to object. That requires a separate, specific order, which the state could not produce. A roughly 17-month gap between the formal declaration and any award proceedings further undercut the claim of urgency, the court said.
The court declined to cancel the acquisition entirely, since the underlying public purpose was not in question, but set aside the final declaration covering the petitioners’ land. It also rejected the argument that the acquisition had lapsed under a newer 2013 law, holding that a period during which the case was under a court-ordered status quo had to be excluded while counting the relevant time limit.
Authorities remain free to restart acquisition proceedings afresh under current law if the land is still needed, the High Court ruled.
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