The Supreme Court today dismisses an appeal by Godrej & Boyce challenging the acquisition of its land for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train Project.
The bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala upheld the Bombay High Court order which said that the project is of national importance and found no illegality in the land acquisition proceedings.
The High Court had stated that “In our view, the powers of the Court under writ jurisdiction are discretionary and merely because there are certain alleged irregularities in the procedure required to be followed while acquiring the writ property, the court cannot exercise discretionary power in view of the fact that the bullet train project being an infrastructural and public project of national importance.”
Furthermore, the High Court held that the larger public interest would prevail over private interest, and the project is the first of its kind.
The order states that “It is the paramount collective interest which would ultimately prevail. In the facts of this case, the private interest claimed by the petitioner does not prevail over the public interest which would subserve an Infrastructural Project of public importance which is a dream project of this country and first of its kind.”
This order led to an appeal before the top court.
The plea by Godrej and Boyce before the High Court had challenged an award of compensation passed on September 15, 2022 by the Deputy Collector for acquiring the company’s land after awarding compensation of ₹264 crores.
The application by the company claimed that the entire proceedings were initiated in 2019 for land acquisition and had lapsed in 2020, hence, the award passed by the officer was void ab initio.
The company later challenged the amendment to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, where the bullet train project made exempted from any social impact assessment to be carried out by the experts.
