MUMBAI: Upholding the right of a landowner to redevelopment, Bombay HC has struck down the state Slum Rehabilitation Authority’s proposed acquisition of a portion of land belonging to Mount Mary Church, Bandra (W) to rehabilitate slum dwellers. While doing so, it rapped the state govt for recognising the right of slum-dwellers to rehabilitation over the right to property, and said the state policy encourages encroachments.
“The Slum Rehabilitation Authority is directed to recognise the preferential rights of the petitioner to undertake redevelopment of its land,” said Justices Girish Kulkarni and Jitendra Jain in Wednesday’s verdict on a petition by Bishop John Rodrigues, sole trustee and rector, Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount.
The judge held as “illegal and invalid” SRA CEO Satish Lokhande’s March 2022 order rejecting the trustee’s objection to the proposed land acquisition. They said it was not open to the CEO to refuse to grant the petitioner “an opportunity to undertake redevelopment” in the “legal capacity as owner of the land.” They said SRA’s approach of “foisting compulsory land acquisition’’ amounted to a complete negation of the right (to property) under Article 300A.
The judges said the record is replete with material to show the trustee had expressed willingness to redevelop the land and rehabilitate the slum-dwellers as part of composite development. Senior advocate Milind Sathe argued that the trustee as landowner has preferential right, settled by law, to redevelop the land. The judges said the case is a “glaring example” of how a 120-day restriction could not be applied as the land was declared a slum amid the pandemic.
They said considering Supreme Court’s orders extending limitation during the pandemic “it is quite astonishing” how the SRA CEO issued a notice and further reckoned on a 120-day limitation. “In our opinion, the acquisition…is totally unwarranted. The decision of the SRA was hurriedly taken, hence, is patently illegal,” they added.
The judges directed that after the trustee submits a redevelopment proposal within 8 weeks, SRA shall consider it within 6 weeks “so development of slums on the petitioner’s land can be carried out as expeditiously as possible.”
The judges said, “once a private land is declared a slum, strangely the encroachment on it gets converted into a legitimate right of a free tenement to the encroacher under govt’s slum policy.”