The farmers, whose huge chunk of land was acquired to build Navi Mumbai, got a marginal relief from the Supreme Court after a 42 year-long legal battle as it enhanced the compensation for them to `25 per square metre.
The Maharashtra government had fixed the award for their land at `1.75 and 2.50 per square metre in 1972 after the notification for acquiring 3,86,790 square metres of land from Roadpali village was issued in February 1970.
A bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadhaya approved the enhancement to `25 per square metre once awarded by the reference court, which had dealt with the acquisition cases.
But the same was modified by the Bombay high court, which reduced it by 15 per cent to carve out development charges from the award.
The HC order was challenged in the Supreme Court in a bunch of petitions by the land owners stating that due to long delay in deciding the matter they had suffered huge loss as the market value of the land had increased many fold.
The Supreme Court said that it would have preferred to refer the case back to the HC for having a fresh view on the entire case but considering the long time of 42 years consumed in the litigation, it would result in a further delay in justice to the landowners.
Hence, it would be appropriate to restore the compensation of `25 per square metre warded by the reference court earlier.
In order to get the award implemented within a month, the top court issued certain pointed directions to the state government and sought a compliance report on the same.
As per the guidelines, special land acquisition officer was asked to depute an officer from revenue department not less than the rank of “naib tehsildar” to get in touch with land owners and inform them about the SC direction on enhanced compensation and pay the balance amount of arrears to them.
The payment should be made only into the bank accounts of each land owner to avoided any malpractice.