The Supreme Court has said it is “dangerous” to say that the private property of an individual cannot be taken over by authorities for the common good. The observation came on Wednesday (24 April) as the apex court heard a case about whether the government can acquire and redistribute privately owned properties if they are considered “material resources of the community”.
A nine-judge Consitution bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, has taken up the three-decade-old case. The development comes amid an unrelated political slugfest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress over
wealth distribution
.
What is the old case before the Supreme Court? We explain.
Dispute over ‘cessed’ properties
In 1986, the Maharashtra government amended the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Act, 1976 (MHADA). The change paved the way for the Mumbai Building Repair and Reconstruction Board (MBRRB) to acquire some “cessed properties” for revamping even if 100 per cent residents were not on board, reported NDTV.
Chapter VIII-A was added to the law, allowing the state government to obtain cessed properties, along with the land they are built on, if 70 per cent of residents ask for it, as per an Indian Express report.
Invoking Article 39(b) of the Constitution, Section 1A was also introduced into MHADA to acquire lands and buildings and transfer them to “needy persons” and the “occupiers of such lands or buildings”, the newspaper report stated.
Article 39(b), which falls under Part IV of the Constitution titled “Directive Principles of State Policy” (DPSP), says that the state should direct its policy towards securing the “ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”.
The challenge to the 1986 amendment
The owners of cessed properties in Mumbai challenged the 1986 amendment to MHADA, and the case before the Supreme Court stems from this.
The Property Owners’ Association (POA), which represents over 20,000 landowners in Mumbai, challenged Chapter VIII-A of the MHADA at the Bombay High Court, arguing that it violated the property owners’ Right to Equality under Article 14 of the Constitution, reported Indian Express.
However, in December 1991, the court dismissed the petitions saying it was the government’s obligation to provide shelter to common people, as per NDTV.
The POA and other petitioners moved the Supreme Court in December 1992 against the Bombay High Court’s decision.
At the top court, the focal point of the case became whether “material resources of the community” under Article 39(b) entails privately owned resources, which would include cessed buildings.
A three-judge bench first heard the matter. In 1996, the case was referred to a five-judge bench, which referred it to a seven-judge bench in March 2001.
The seven-judge Bench took note of Justice Krishna Iyer’s minority opinion on the interpretation of Article 39(b) in 1977. “We have some difficulty in sharing the broad view that material resources of the community under Article 39(b) covers what is privately owned,” the bench said, as per Live Law.
Eventually, in 2002, the apex court led by then Chief Justice SP Bharucha referred the matter to a nine-judge bench.
Interpretation of Article 39(b)
In the State of Karnataka v Shri Ranganatha Reddy (1977), a seven-judge Bench by a 4:3 majority held that privately owned resources did not come under “material resources of the community”.
However, Justice Krishna Iyer disagreed and stated that material resources of the community included even privately owned resources.
“Every thing of value or use in the material world is material resource and the individual being a member of the community his resources are part of those of the community. To exclude ownership of private resources from the coils of Article 39(b) is to cipherise (make hidden) its very purpose of redistribution the socialist way,” he said, as per Indian Express.
Justice NL Untwalia’s majority opinion mentioned that it disagreed with Justice Iyer.
Notably, Justice Iyer’s view was later affirmed by a five-judge Constitution Bench in Sanjeev Coke Manufacturing Company v Bharat Coking Coal (1982), with the court upholding the legislation that nationalised coal mines and their coke oven plants, the newspaper reported.
A nine-judge Bench also affirmed Justice Iyer’s opinion in the case of Mafatlal Industries Ltd v Union of India (1996).
What has the apex court said now?
After the case remained in limbo for two decades, it was taken up by the
Supreme Court
again this year.
Besides Article 39(b), another provision before the apex court is Article 31C which deals with saving laws “giving effect to certain directive principles”. Article 31C states that no law enacted by the state under the DPSP shall be deemed void because it is inconsistent with Article 14 and Article 19 of the Constitution which deal with fundamental rights, including equality before the law and freedom of speech.
Hearing the matter on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said that it “may be a little extreme to suggest that ‘material resources of the community’ only means public resources and we do not have their origin in the private property of an individual. I will tell you why it would be dangerous to take that view.”
“Take simple things like mines and even private forests. For instance, for us to say that the governmental policy will not apply to the private forests under Article 39 (b)… therefore keep the hands off. It will be extremely dangerous as a proposition,” the bench was quoted as saying by PTI.
With inputs from agencies
Link to article –
Can the government take over, redistribute private property? The case before Supreme Court explained
