On 26 April 2011, a two-judge bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly set out the principles on what constitutes 'taking of possession' of acquired land. There is no universal rule — the mode turns on the nature of the land. For vacant land, the authority going to the spot and drawing up a panchnama ordinarily suffices; where a crop is standing or a structure exists, notice to the occupier and possession before independent witnesses is ordinarily required. It remains the go-to statement of the possession-and-vesting principles.
On 2 January 2025, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that where the State takes possession of land but pays no compensation for the better part of two decades, the prolonged deprivation violates Article 300A — and that although a Special Land Acquisition Officer cannot on his own shift the statutory date for fixing market value, a constitutional court under Articles 32, 226 or 142 may, in exceptional cases of inordinate State delay, direct that market value be reckoned as of a later date. On the facts, the Court fixed the value as on 22 April 2019. A digest of the holding and its place in the Article 300A line.
On 24 November 2020, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that the Union's continued occupation of requisitioned land for 33 years after its requisitioning authority had lapsed was 'condoning lawlessness'. Justice S. Ravindra Bhat's judgment read Article 300A as standing on the same footing as Articles 21 and 265 — a guarantee of the supremacy of the rule of law — and directed possession to be restored within three months. The case turns on the distinction between requisition and acquisition.
On 7 March 2011, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court quashed the acquisition of fertile agricultural land for a district jail at Shahjahanpur, holding that the emergency power under Section 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 cannot be invoked to dispense with the landowner's right to object under Section 5A absent a real and demonstrable urgency. A digest of the holding, the reasoning on urgency and alternative sites, and where the decision sits in the urgency-clause line.
On 31 August 2016, a two-judge Bench of Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Arun Mishra quashed the acquisition of roughly 1,000 acres at Singur in Hooghly, West Bengal, for Tata Motors' Small Car (Nano) project. The two judges wrote separately and split on 'public purpose' — Gopala Gowda J held the acquisition was really for a company and had bypassed the mandatory Part VII procedure, while Arun Mishra J held that attracting industry and employment IS a valid public purpose — but concurred that the Section 5A enquiry was not genuinely conducted, and on that shared ground the acquisition was struck down. A digest of the two opinions, the shared ratio, and the relief.
On 16 May 2024, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that the constitutional right to property under Article 300A is 'a net of intersecting sub-rights' — and that before depriving a person of property the State must honour seven procedural sub-rights: notice, hearing, a reasoned decision, public purpose, restitution or fair compensation, an efficient and expeditious process, and conclusion. Because Section 352 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 prescribes no procedure for acquisition, it can never be a valid power of acquisition, and the purported deprivation was without authority of law. A digest of the holding, the seven sub-rights, and their significance for land-acquisition practice.
On 9 August 2011, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia — with the judgment authored by Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan — upheld the Roerich Estate Acquisition Act 1996 and Section 110 of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, and in doing so laid down the doctrinal foundation of Article 300A: a law depriving a person of property must be for a public purpose and must be just, fair and reasonable in conformity with the rule of law. Article 300A does not, in terms, mandate compensation, but the phrase 'authority of law' imports rule-of-law safeguards against arbitrary or confiscatory deprivation.
On 15 April 2011, a two-judge bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly held that the power under Sections 17(1) and 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to dispense with the Section 5A objection enquiry is an extraordinary power — available only where the public purpose cannot brook even a few weeks' delay. Acquisition for planned industrial and residential development near Greater Noida, which by its nature takes years, could not justify denying landowners their Section 5A hearing. Once urgency is challenged, the burden falls on the State to justify the dispensation.
On 2 November 2012, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that even after the 44th Constitutional Amendment removed property from the list of fundamental rights, the right to property survives as both a human right in a welfare State and a constitutional right under Article 300A. The State had taken the appellants' land without acquisition or compensation; forcible dispossession without due process, the Court held, is unconstitutional — and the State cannot escape behind the very delay its own default produced.
On 19 September 2019, a two-judge bench held Section 3-J of the National Highways Act, 1956 unconstitutional to the extent it denied solatium and interest available under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 — restoring those benefits to landowners whose land was acquired for national highways between 1997 and 2015, and harmonising the highways regime with the 1894 Act and the 2013 Act.
On 8 January 2020, the Supreme Court held that the forcible dispossession of a citizen from her private property without following due process of law violates both the human right to property and the constitutional right under Article 300A. An illiterate widow's land had been taken for a road in 1967–68 with no acquisition and no compensation. A welfare State, the Court held, cannot plead the bar of limitation against a continuing wrong, nor perfect its title by adverse possession over its own citizen's land.
In May 2024, a three-judge bench applied Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal to hold that deemed lapse under Section 24(2) requires both non-payment and non-possession, upheld the Delhi acquisitions, and held that a subsequent change in the law is no ground for condonation of delay.
On 6 March 2020, a five-judge Constitution Bench overruled *Pune Municipal Corporation v. Harakchand Misirimal Solanki* (2014) and substantially restructured the doctrinal architecture under Section 24(2) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The substantive reading: 'or' between possession and compensation in Section 24(2) is to be read as 'nor' — the deemed lapse of acquisition proceedings requires that both conditions be unmet, not just one. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the substantive implications for land-acquisition practice.