Assigned land takeover: Govt told to pay full market value

​Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad on Friday directed the Telangana State government to pay full market value within four months for the assigned lands it resumed in 2008 from 70 assignees belonging to Chincholi village under Sarangapur mandal in Nirmal district. If the government failed to pay to the assignees within the stipulated time, then those lands should be acquired under the 2013 Land Acquisition Act.

The division bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice Shameem Akhter passed an order to this effect while admitting a writ appeal filed by Telangana State government against the order of single judge directing the government to acquire the lands of the petitioners under the new 2013 Land Acquisition Act.

The government had assigned around 63 acres of land to the landless poor in 1978 and the assignees brought the land into cultivation by digging borewells, etc. In the year 2008 the then government decided to build Rajiv Swagruha houses on these lands and therefore resumed the lands from the assignees for the public purpose.

But the government had neither paid any ex-gratia to the land-losers nor allotted land to them because it had cancelled their assignment on the grounds that they had violated the conditions of assignment by not cultivating their lands.

The land-losers objected to this and brought to the notice of the authorities that the lands are in cultivation. They also petitioned them to take their lands after initiating land acquisition proceedings. But the authorities did not respond.

Against this background, as many as 70 farmers approached the High Court in 2016 and filed a writ petition seeking direction to the government to initiate land acquisition proceedings under 2013 Land Acquisition Act. The single judge granted their prayer and ordered for the same.

Criticising the action of the government, the single judge observed in the judgment “If the government intends to bring a policy or scheme for the poor and marginalised people, there is huge government land lying vacant, which can be utilised for the said purpose or if no such government land is available, it can acquire the land from other farmers, who have huge holdings or from other persons, who have sufficient land. But it is not desirable to snatch the assigned land from the poor as they would be depending on the land for their livelihood and such an act of the government is nothing short of taking away the bread from the poor. This needs to be deprecated.”

During the hearing of appeal on Friday, the division bench stayed the operation of the single judge order to the extent of initiating fresh land acquisition proceedings and directed the government to pay full market compensation to the land-losers as per the larger bench judgment in Mekala Pandu case.

It admitted the appeal and said other issues of applicability of Section 24(2) of the new 2013 Land Acquisition Act in such cases needs to be gone into in detail.