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 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.