We’re not even going to pretend we know what’s going on that spurred the Supreme Court of India to issue this ruling in Delhi Ag. Marketing Bd. v. Devi (Dead), No. 10757 (Mar. 20, 2025), either in the opinion itself, or especially behind the scenes.
But any judicial opinion that starts off like this will certainly grab our attention:
Turning the law of land acquisition on its head, the astonishing events that this appeal is founded on need to be narrated in some detail.
Slip op. at 1. Count us intrigued. (And besides, not knowing anything about India’s law of expropriation has never stopped us before, has it? See here and here, for example.)
With that out of the way, let’s go.
Way back in the day (and here we’re talking 1963, so like really way back), the Board acquired 33 acres from Devi for a grain market. But then, apparently, not much happened. It sounds to us that the development process there is as slow as it is here. Because flash forward to 1988, and the Board agreed with Devi (then still alive, but now passed on, if the caption means what we think), to covey a portion of the expropriated property back.
Sounds good, right? Board takes for a public use, and later decides that it doesn’t need or want some of it. So find the former owner, find a way to covey it back.
Devi seems to have thought so. Flash forward again to 2004, and she sought to enforce the 1988 agreement (an event the opinion characterizes as “‘curiouser and curiouser’, to put it in the words of Lewis Carroll’s Alice[]'”). The arbitrator, over the objections of the Board, held in favor of Devi and ordered the Board to “comply with the said agreement by performing its obligations thereunder and execute a conveyance deed in favour of Bhagwan Devi” and return “3 bighas and 5 biswas of land to her.” Slip op. at 5.
The Delhi High Court upheld the arbitrator.
Flash forward yet again, another decade, and the Board instituted another challenge. By then, it was Devi’s heirs who defended against the Board’s claim that by statute the government’s power to “acquire property, be it by private negotiation or by compulsory acquisition … always stood protected.” Slip op. at 8. Once acquired, it cannot be unacquired at the sole discretion of the government.
Why not?
When the State uses its sovereign power of eminent domain and acquires land for a public purpose, as in the case on hand, i.e., for establishment of a grain market under the control of a statutory Board, such an exercise cannot be set at naught by the beneficiary of such acquisition, viz., the statutory Board, by entering into a private agreement shortly after the acquisition so as to reverse the usage of the power of eminent domain by the State. Validating this dubious enterprise by a statutory beneficiary of a compulsory acquisition would be nothing short of permitting a fraud on the exercise of such sovereign power by the State.
Slip op. at 10.
A taking for public benefit means that it is an abuse of the expropriation power to just convey it back, because (we think) there’s no showing the later conveyance is for a public benefit. Thus, in the thinking of the India Supreme Court, the agreement was void because it violated public policy. And because of the timing of the events, the court was left with the impression “that there was something suspect about the transaction.” Slip op. at 11.
To us — an uneducated reader — this case highlights the fundamental differences between how expropriation is viewed in our respective jurisdictions. In the U.S., having a prior owner gain back some part of what was taken probably seems like a good thing to most of us. Protecting and promoting private property is the watchword.
In India, by contrast, the court seems more focused on protecting the process from being abused for private gain. Not a bad thing, mind you–just different. What we truly want to know, however, is what was really going on behind the scenes here? It sure seems like there was a lot.
Delhi Ag. Marketing Bd v. Devi (Dead), No. 10757 (India Mar. 20, 2025)
