Legally Speaking: Supreme Court upholds validity of Tamil Nadu Highways Act

The Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Tamil Nadu Highways Act on Tuesday, ruling that the Act’s provisions are not discriminatory or arbitrary when compared to the provisions of the central law – the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act, 2013.
A bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and PV Sanjay Kumar said that a State law could be contrary to the Central law but if it receives the assent of the President of India, then it would stand protected under Article 254 (2).
Hence, merely because there is discrimination between the two statutes would not be ground to invalidate the State law, the bench ruled.
“The very foundation and basis of Article 254(2) of the Constitution is that a particular State enactment runs contra to the provisions of a Central legislation on the same subject, but despite the same it would stand protected after it receives the assent of the President of India thereunder. Therefore, it is a foregone conclusion that disparity and discrimination would be writ large between the two enactments and aspects relating to their implementation. In such a situation, the question of comparing the two legislations, for the purpose of making out a case under Article 14 of the Constitution, would not arise. Such an exercise would be akin to comparing chalk with cheese, i.e., two essentially unequal entities,” the Court held.
The decision followed an appeal against a 2019 Madras High Court decision that upheld the Act, stating that it lacked inherent arbitrariness.

However, the High Court ruled that the Act was effectively null and void following the passage of the 2013 LA Act.