New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the severity of financial burden cannot be used as a factor to deny just and equitable compensation for land acquisition, a decision that could significantly reduce the National Highways Authority of India’s Rs 29,000-crore liability for land acquisition since 1995, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.NHAI had sought review of two judgments in the case of Tarsem Singh on the grounds that it had wrongly calculated the financial burden as Rs 100 crore when the actual amount was about Rs 29,000 crore.A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan of the CJI said: “The constitutional guarantee of just compensation cannot be provided on the basis of the magnitude of the financial burden. Therefore, a mere escalation in anticipated liability, however serious, does not in itself constitute a valid ground for review or modification of the judgment.”CJI Kant, while writing the judgment, said that the principle laid down in the earlier judgment – that the financial impact of granting pension and interest cannot override the substantive rights of the land losers – is sound in terms of law and equity and does not require modification. However, the SC found it necessary to clarify the earlier judgment to limit the relief of benefits and interest to those landowners whose claims were pending and to deny relief and interest to those landowners who had already received compensation and never appealed. The judge said the landowners would not be able to wake up from their slumber after decades and sought higher compensation under the Tarsem Singh verdict. “All landowners claiming for the amount and/or component of compensation in respect of land acquired under the NH Act on or after March 28, 2008 are entitled to seek the addition of ‘interest’, ‘solatium’ and ‘solatium interest’ to their compensation claims,” the SC said.
