In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court on August 22 upheld a 2018 Bombay High Court verdict quashing the Maharashtra Government’s land acquisition in Mumbai’s Kurla area for slum rehabilitation, and held a landowner “has the first right among stakeholders to undertake redevelopment”. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N K Singh rejected the argument of the Maharashtra Government and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), and said while the Authority’s power to redevelop may be subject to the rights of the landholder and the occupants, there is nothing in these provisions to create a preference for owners over the rights of the ‘occupants’ or other ‘landholders’. Upholding the June and July 2018 Bombay HC judgements quashing the state notification acquiring certain land belonging to Indian Corks Mill, the SC said a landowner of a slum rehabilitation srea is “not only entitled to the rights granted” by the the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971, but “also enjoys some inherent rights attached to an immovable property”. “Ordinarily, a landowner is entitled to all the incidental benefits derived from the ownership of such immovable property. Ownership rights are also constitutionally protected and can only be interfered with as a result of the operation of law. Even the principles of equity come to the rescue of an owner, barring when the landowner is denuded of such protection in accordance with law. These rights even go beyond those of the other landholders.” Unholy nexus Referring to a situation where the slum dweller and the landowner submit proposals, the August 22 judgement said that allowing SRA to exercise any discretion in giving priority to a particular proposal may lead to discriminatory and arbitrary results motivated by extraneous considerations. “It also creates scope for an unholy nexus between the SRA and private developers. Such a regime would leave slum dwellers, who are already at a grave disadvantage against developers and landowners, vulnerable to greater exploitation, and could even result in unaccountable losses to the State exchequer,” the top court said. “Ultimately, the real victims would be the slum dwellers themselves, left in inhumane living conditions and pushed to the very end of the line when receiving the benefits envisaged under the Slums Act. To counteract such occurrences, the Legislature, in its wisdom, has thought it appropriate to confer preferential rights on the landowner, though conditional for the redevelopment of the SR Area.” It added that the “peremptory right of redevelopment vested in the landowner does not militate against the rights of the slum dwellers.” “If the landowner does not come up with a redevelopment proposal within a reasonable time, the occupants of the SR Area are entitled to submit their own proposal for redevelopment, empowering this marginalised section of our urban society. It enables them to forward an SR Scheme through a willing developer when the owner is not ready to support their endeavour to rehabilitate themselves.” “It cannot be overlooked that in the absence of a prior notice, the owner may not even become aware that the Subject Land has been declared an SR Area.” Tarabai Society case The court added that while a gazette notification or a public notice in newspapers shall be deemed to have informed an owner that an area has been declared as Slum Rehabilitation Area, it will, however, be “far-fetched and preposterous” to assume that “such owner is also obligated to submit a redevelopment scheme when the said notification does not invite the owner to submit any proposal”. "Mere declaration of an area as an SR Area does not amount to inviting the landowner to redevelop the land, and the publication of the former cannot attract the consequences attributable to the latter.” The land in question was encroached upon by hutment dwellers, after which a portion of it measuring 3,045.03 square metre was declared as a slum area under Section 4 of the Slums Act on September 18, 1979. Over time, the slum expanded, and its dwellers formed the Tarabai Nagar Co-operative Housing Society (Proposed) (Tarabai Society) on February 28, 2002. Tarabai Society wrote letters and applications in 2006-2008 before the Competent Authority under the Slums Act, seeking a survey of the slum, declaration of the remainder of the Subject Land as a Slum Area, and its acquisition for redevelopment. Accordingly, surveys were conducted, and vide notification dated March 11, 2011, the SRA declared the entire Subject Land as an SR Area. Subsequently, responding to a notice, ICM expressed its intention to redevelop the land itself through an SR scheme. In 2013, the CEO recommended the acquisition of the land under Section 14 of the Act, noting that ICM had shown inclination to redevelop but not proposed any SR Scheme. In 2016, the Maharashtra Government issued a notification to acquire the land.
