STATE OF KERALA SPECIAL TAHSILDAR LAND ACQUISITION TOWN PLANNING TRUST Vs. T M PETER:COCHIN TOWN PLANNING TRUST

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Law and development, as yet a Cinderella of our corpus juris, is a burgeoning branch of creative jurisprudence which needs to be nourished with judicious care, by courts in developing countries. The Town Planning Act, a developmental legislation amended and updated by the Kerala Legislature, was designed to draw up plans and to execute projects for the improvement of the towns and cities of that over-crowded State with its populous multitudes uncontrollably spiraling defying social hygiene and economic engineering. Although the Act is of 1932 and originally confined to the Travancore portion of the Kerala State, it has received amendatory attention and now applies to the whole of Kerala with beneficial impact upon explosive cities like Cochin. This legislation, naturally, made some deviation from the Kerala Land Acquisition Act, 1961, but having received insufficient attention from the draftsman on constitutional provisions, has landed the Act in litigation through a challenge in the High Court where it met with its judicial Waterloo when a Division Bench invalidated Ss. 31 (1) and 34 (2A) which were the strategic provisions whose exit from the statute would virtually scotch the whole measure. The State of Kerala has come up in appeal, although the immediate victim is the Cochin Town Planning Trust.

(2.) The schematic projection of the Town Planning Act (the Act, for short) may be a good starting point for the discussion of the submissions made at the Bar. The Act, with a prophetic touch, envisions explosive urban developments leading to terrific stresses and strains, human, industrial and societal. Land is at the base of all development and demand for the limited space available in the cities might so defile and distort planned progress as to give future shock unless scientific social engineering takes hold of the situation. The State or its specialized agencies must take pre-emptive action and regulate the process of growth. The Act fills this need and contemplates the creation of a Town Planning Trust, preparation of town planning schemes, acquisition of lands in this behalf, compensation for betterment by citizens and other miscellaneous provision apart from creation of development authorities. While this is the sweep of the statute our concern is limited to schemes sanctioned by Section 12, acquisition of lands for such schemes under Section 32, compensation for such compulsory taking under Section 34 and the modifications in the manner of acquisition and the mode of compensation wrought into the Land Acquisition Act by the above provisions of the Town Planning Act. It is indisputable that the compensation payable and certain other matters connected therewith, differ as between the provisions in this Act and the Land Acquisition Act. The latter is more beneficial to the owner and the challenge naturally has stemmed from this allegedly invidious discrimination. In two separate cases, two Judges upheld the challenge and, on appeal, the High Court affirmed the holdings that the provisions of sub-section 34 (1) and 34 (2A) were unconstitutional being violative of Article 14.

(3.) We will now proceed to scan the substance of the submissions and the reasoning in the High Court's judgment.