Judiciary

KEY POINTS

LARR act, 2013

·        This Act determined the compensation payable to a landowner from whom land had been taken prior to the year 2009.

·        In such cases, the state ought to have not only taken possession of the land but also paid the amounts determined as due, failing which the entire proceedings will lapse.

Recent crisis in SC

·        Ordinarily, the court held, the state is always obligated to pay the landowner money in terms of any award made.

·        It was only in exceptional circumstances, the government could deposit those amounts into a court of law.

·        These included cases where a landowner might have refused to receive compensation, for some reason or the other.

·        But even there, a mere payment into the government’s own treasury wouldn’t suffice.

·        Earlier a three member bench was formed to decide on this, the bench ruled that government’s decision is void with lands being returned to their original owners.

·        High Courts across India almost uniformly adopted this verdict, reversing acquisitions in a host of cases.

·        Another three member bench decided that in cases where a landowner refuses compensation, a payment into the government’s treasury was sufficient, and that there was no attendant obligation on the state to deposit this money into court.

Why Uniformity is critical?

·        In India, since the Supreme Court interprets the law for the whole country, ensuring uniformity in its decisions is especially critical.

·        Stare decisis (a promise to stand by things decided, to respect and honour precedent) - a principle, foundational to the judiciary’s effective functioning.

·        If judges are allowed to easily depart from precedent, citizens might find themselves in an impossible position, where the statement of law remains prone to the constant vagaries of human interpretation.

·        But achieving uniformity has proved challenging, because the court doesn’t sit as one, functioning instead as a series of differently sized panels.

·        Meanwhile, ensuring stare decisis may also result in lack of flexibility to correct its own errors.

To ensure Uniformity

·        Therefore, to ensure that its decisions remain predominantly consistent, the court has carved out rules that make its judgments binding on all benches of the court of an equal or lesser strength.

·        This convention was even expressly acknowledged by a Constitution Bench which held that a three-judge bench cannot overrule a precedent set by an earlier bench of equal strength.

·        Additionally, the Constitution Bench also highlighted that, in cases where a bench thinks that the previous bench might have blundered, they might refer the dispute to the Chief Justice, seeking the creation of a larger panel.

·        Maintaining such a rule not only ensures stability in the court’s rulings but also provides the court with the necessary flexibility to correct its errors in appropriate cases.