SC on Right to private property

Reiterating that the right to property is a constitutional right, the Supreme Court has held that the government cannot deprive a person of his land in an arbitrary manner. It asked the courts to view the action of the government in acquiring land for private parties in the name of urgency with “suspicion”. It quashed the acquisition of 205 hectares of agricultural land acquired by the Greater NOIDA Industrial Development Authority in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar for business entrepreneurs in March 2008. The SC said: “(the) court should not adopt a pedantic approach, as has been done in the present case, and decide the matter keeping in view the constitutional goals of social and economic justice and the fact that even though the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, the same continues to be an important constitutional right and in terms of Article 300-A, no person can be deprived of his property except by authority of law.” The land owners led by Radhy Shyam had challenged the acquisition on the grounds that the government invoked Section 17(1) and 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act empowering it to dispense with the process of inviting objections from the victims as mandated under Section 5A of the legislation.