DOLLAR COMPANY MADRAS Vs. COLLECTOR OF MADRAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a pedestrian appeal by a land-owner whose property, having been acquired compulsorily by the State, asks for more compensation, probably appetised by increases over the Collector's award granted by the City Civil Court and the High Court. The grounds urged are conventional, based on comparison of prices shown in land Sales in the neighbourhood and the general escalation of urban land values in the country.

(2.) 127 odd 'grounds' (a ground is around 5 1/2 cents; actually 2,400 sq. ft) were acquired in 1959 for the construction of a Housing Colony for the Madras Port Trust employers by the then Madras State. They comprise R.S. No. 4032/1 and other items with which we are not concerned, since the owners of those items have not come up in appeal to this Court. The relevant notification under S. 4 (1) was made on August 12, 1959 and so the compensation has to be pegged to the market value as on that date. Of course, 16 years have rolled by since, thanks to delay which has come to stay in the administrative and forensic processes of our land. That is by the way. The Land Acquisition Officer awarded Rs. 800/- per ground. The City Civil Court, approaching the problem of valuation plot-wise, as for a housing colony, made the necessary deductions involved in that process and awarded at the rate of Rs. 1,000/per ground. The High Court, on appeal, made an upward revision, discarding the trial court's approach and awarded Rs. 1,800/- per ground. The State has not come up in appeal, but the unquenched claimant asks for more in appeal, demanding, at least Rs. 2,200/- per ground.

(3.) Generally speaking, a cardinal component in the escalation of prices of urban realty which does not find sufficient expression in the ancient Land Acquisition Act, 1894, is the developmental operations inevitable in a rapidly industrialising society for which the individual owner makes no social contribution. Be that as it may, courts have to apply the legislation as extant, it being left to the law-makers to harmonize social justice with individual rights by appropriate reforms. We have to proceed to determine the compensation according to the canons crystallized in S. 23 of the Act.