Court with Regard to Pending Compensation in Land Acquisition Cases

The Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday wondered at the huge variation in figures related to amounts submitted by the state governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the details collected by the court with regard to pending compensation in land acquisition cases, before the trial courts in both the states. A Division Bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K. Vijaya Lakshmi, was dealing with a case taken up based on a letter by G. Venkata Krishnaiah, Principal District Judge of Mahbubnagar with regard to large number of pending Execution Petitions (EPs) in the trial courts in land acquisition cases.

Earlier, the Telangana Chief Secretary submitted that there were 1,669 cases pending in the trial courts and Rs 457.79 crore is required to pay the compensation and the government had decided to pay the amount in the coming financial year from April 1 to December 31, 2018. The Chief Secretary of AP submitted that there are 918 cases pending in the state for compensation till February 5, 2018 and rs 84.32 crores to be paid as compensation in those cases and the government has already deposited Rs 21,55 crores in courts and three months’ time is required to pay the compensation in all the cases. 

The High Court had asked the Registrar General (RG) to collect the details of pending compensation in trial courts of both the states and accordingly the RG submitted the details before the Bench on Tuesday.

The Bench said that as per the report of the RG, the Andhra Pradesh government has to pay Rs 867 crores in pending cases and it had submitted that only Rs 84.32 crores is pending and similarly Telangana said that Rs 457.79 crores is pending but the RG report indicates that it has to pay Rs 906 crores .

Stating that the things will be set right only when all the ongoing land acquisitions in both the states are stayed, the Bench directed the Chief Secretaries of both the states to look into the report of the RG and submit reports explaining the reasons for the variations.