Nobody Can Take Benefit of Mistake Of Court': SC

Key Takeaways

• High court made a mistake by clubbing a land acquisition case, which got mechanically enhanced.
• The appellants claimed they did not receive sufficient compensation for the acquisition of their land, and placed their arguments on the inadvertently enhanced petition.
• Supreme court stated that an advantage cannot be taken of an inadvertent mistake by a court when passing an order.

Facts

• A notification was issued under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, in 1976, in order to acquired some land for ‘NOIDA’, for the purpose of planned development of industries.
• In 1977 the Collector took possession of land, and the Special Land Acquisition Officer declared a compensation award for the landowners.
• Before the Reference Court, landowners claimed a high compensation rate, but this was not matched. The Court however slightly increased the previous compensation rate. When this batch of appeals was taken to the High Court, the order of the Reference court was confirmed and the appeals were dismissed.
• One such appeal was ‘inadvertently’ clubbed with the other appeals, and got mechanically enhanced with a 1992 acquisition that took place.

Appellant’s arguments

• The appellants placed their arguments on the enhancement received on this land mistakenly.
• They also claimed that the value assigned to their land was insufficient compared to land

Supreme Court

• Since there was a petition pending from the NOIDA authority, the Supreme Court refused to accept arguments based on the High Court Judgement, thus the first argument was not considered.
• The Supreme Court noticed the mistake in the High Court’s order and how it was not pointed out to the High Court.
• It stated that “Nobody can be permitted to take the benefit of the mistake either of the Court or of any party, which mistake has occurred inadvertently and without noticing the peculiar facts.”
• It was also observed that when market value of land is being determined, compensation given to land acquired later cannot be considered for all land.
• The appeals were partly allowed.

Questions

• Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision?
• What do you understand by the term ‘land acquisition'?