Mumbai, July 14, 2026: The Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to reassess compensation for a Kurla landowner for the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road project after holding that authorities could not legally correct a land acquisition award 31 years after it was passed to include the owners' names.

A Bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Rajesh Patil, on Monday, ruled that the 1986 land acquisition award, a 2017 corrigendum to that award, and a subsequent notice issued to the landowners were all illegal.

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The court directed the authorities to issue a fresh award under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, after determining the current market value of the land within three months.

Court Finds Acquisition Flawed

The High Court was hearing a petition filed by the owners of a 1,613-square-metre plot in Kurla acquired by the state for the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road project.

The petitioners, legal heirs of the original owner Ahmad Izzat Mohammed Hasham Dada, argued that although their land was acquired, they were never issued statutory notices nor included in the acquisition award passed on September 23, 1986.

Instead, notices were issued to unrelated persons, and they were neither heard nor paid compensation. Despite possessing the correct revenue records, officials failed to notify the actual landowners or offer them compensation.

The state later admitted that the omission was a mistake. In 2017, officials issued a corrigendum replacing the names in the award with those of the petitioners. The landowners challenged this correction, arguing that such a change was not permitted after three decades.

The Bench agreed, observing that the authorities had failed to follow the mandatory legal procedure while acquiring the land.

“The Special Land Acquisition Officer has acted in such a manner that it has left the petitioners/landowners to litigate for the last 15 years,” the court said, adding that the case “surpasses all reasonable and legitimate imagination of a legal mind”.

Corrigendum Held Illegal

The court also criticised the attempt to cure a fundamental defect in the acquisition process by issuing a corrigendum after 31 years. It held that only clerical or arithmetic errors can be corrected under the law and not substantive defects such as changing the identity of the landowners.

The court noted that in 2011, pursuant to an earlier order, the state had deposited Rs 1,42,038 as compensation and Rs 1,30,432 as interest, taking the total deposited amount to Rs 2,72,470. However, it held that this did not cure the illegality in the acquisition process.

Holding that the acquisition process violated the petitioners' constitutional right to property under Article 300A, the Bench said illegal actions by the authorities could not be recognised merely because possession of the land had already been taken.

“There cannot be recognition of any illegal actions... Such actions can never have any sanctity,” the court observed. It further held that the petitioners were entitled to compensation at the current market value, though the exercise would be carried out under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and not the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.

Court Criticises Official Negligence

In a detailed 126-page judgment, the court also lamented that although the colonial-era Land Acquisition Act, 1894 was replaced by the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, more than a decade ago, cases under the repealed law continue to reach courts because officials often fail to follow basic land acquisition procedures.

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The court observed that while the legal position under the old law is well settled, negligence and a lack of understanding of mandatory procedures by the authorities continue to result in unnecessary litigation.

“Although the law stands firm and tall, the manner in which the government machinery, in a given situation, would act can be quite unpredictable,” the court remarked.

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