{"id":30910,"date":"2018-10-27T11:24:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T05:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30910"},"modified":"2018-10-27T11:24:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T05:54:16","slug":"united-by-a-common-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/united-by-a-common-purpose\/","title":{"rendered":"United by a common purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/lead\/united-by-a-common-purpose\/article22882621.ece\"><b>United by a common purpose<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Constitution Bench in the land acquisition case must show us that the court still respects rules of precedent<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Provision in Land Act:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A provision in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act) is being replaced the Land Acquisition Act of 1894.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result, landowners were <\/span><b>placed at the state\u2019s mercy.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Government was accorded <\/span><b>vast discretion to expropriate land for supposed public use.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Requirements of due process were <\/span><b>scant, and the amount of money paid in return for land was often derisory, that too in the rare cases<\/b> <b>where it could be grasped from the exchequer\u2019s strong hands.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it is also to be remembered that the <\/span><b>number of safeguards that the law legislates has made the process of acquisition manifestly fairer.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For instance, it <\/span><b>compels a social and environmental impact assessment as a precondition for any acquisition.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Besides, it also acknowledges a <\/span><b>need for a system of rehabilitation and resettlement for those whose livelihoods are likely to be affected by the transfer of land.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Background:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ordinarily, the court held that the <\/span><b>state is always obligated to pay the landowner money in terms of any award made.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was only in exceptional circumstances, defined in <\/span><b>Section 31 of the 1894 statute, that the government could deposit those amounts into a court of law.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These included cases where a <\/span><b>landowner might have refused to receive compensation, for some reason or the other.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But even there, a <\/span><b>mere payment into the government\u2019s own treasury wouldn\u2019t suffice.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, the proceedings in all these cases under the 1894 law, the bench ruled, had to be <\/span><b>annulled, with lands being returned to their original owners.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>High Courts across India almost uniformly adopted this verdict,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reversing acquisitions in a host of cases.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>A different reading:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On February 8, a divided three-judge bench departed from the decision in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pune Municipality<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has been found that in cases<\/span><b> where a landowner refuses compensation, a payment into the government\u2019s treasury was sufficient, and that there was no attendant obligation on the state to deposit this money into court.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This reading clearly fits <\/span><b>neither with the language of the LARR Act nor the law\u2019s larger objectives.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What makes the ruling patently unconscionable, though, is that <\/span><b>it roundly disregards Pune Municipal Corporation, holding that the bench there showed a lack of due regard for the law.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Stare decisis, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a principle foundational to the judiciary\u2019s effective functioning, is predicated on a belief that settled points of law ought not to be disturbed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea is that a court\u2019s rulings should <\/span><b>represent a consistent position.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If judges are allowed to easily depart from precedent, <\/span><b>citizens might find themselves in an impossible position, where the statement of law remains prone to the constant vagaries of human interpretation.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Maintaining uniformity in Supreme Court\u2019s decisions:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In India, since the Supreme Court declares the <\/span><b>law for the whole country, ensuring uniformity in its decisions is especially critical.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, to ensure that its decisions remain predominantly consistent, the court has carved out <\/span><b>rules that make its judgments binding on all benches of the court of an equal or lesser strength.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court held that a <\/span><b>three-judge bench cannot overrule a precedent set by an earlier bench of equal strength, but must, in cases where it thinks the previous bench might have blundered, refer the dispute to the Chief Justice, seeking the creation of a larger panel.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maintaining such a rule not only<\/span><b> ensures stability in the court\u2019s rulings but also provides the court with the necessary flexibility to correct its errors in appropriate cases.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United by a common purpose Context: The Constitution Bench in the land acquisition case must show us that the court still respects rules of precedent Provision in Land Act: A provision in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act) is being replaced the Land Acquisition&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/united-by-a-common-purpose\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">United by a common purpose<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704895778},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}