HC: Stay period should not be excluded from rolling back land acquisition process

CHANDIGARH: In an order with wide ramifications, especially in land acquisition issues, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday held that the spell of stay granted by courts should not be excluded while computing the 5-year period prescribed under the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013.
According to the Act, if the land of a person has not been taken over within 5 years of notification of its acquisition, the government will lose its right to purchase that property.However, it is not clear if there is a stay on acquisition of land from any court then that stretch would be excluded from the 5-year period or not.
Deciding the issue, a full bench of the high court on Wednesday made it clear that the period of stay granted by the courts was not to be excluded for determining the period of 5 years under Section 24(2) of the R&R Act, 2013.
A full bench comprising Justice Hemant Gupta, Justice Sandhawalia and Justice Kuldeep Singh passed these orders with 2:1 majority while hearing a bunch of petitions filed on the issue by landowners from different districts of Haryana. Justice Kuldeep Singh differed on the findings of other two judges.
Appearing on behalf of petitioners, senior advocate Mohan Jain had contented that the Haryana government was handing over land to private builders after acquiring it from farmers and landowners.
Jain argued that the very purpose of the right to fair compensation could be defeated if the period of stay was excluded while counting the five years' period. He had argued that the legislature had intentionally not provided for exclusion of stay period in the R&R Act, 2013. He said it was in sharp contrast to the old Land Acquisition Act, 1894, where specific exclusion of stay period was provided.
According to the counsel, in Section 24(2) of 2013 Act, "legal fiction" had been created by the legislature. As per the Supreme Court judgments, land acquisition proceedings shall lapse, where the award was passed 5 years back.