The Supreme Court on August 22 set aside the acquisition of Church-owned land in Bandra by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) [Saldanha Real Estate Pvt. Ltd. vs. Bishop John Rodrigues & Ors.]..A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan held that the landowner’s preferential right to redevelop slum-affected property cannot be taken away without due process.The Court found that the SRA wrongly ignored the redevelopment proposal submitted by the Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount, which owns the land, and instead pushed through a scheme backed by a cooperative housing society of slum dwellers and its chosen developer..The case related to a 1,596 square meter (sq.m.) parcel of land in Bandra, where hutments have stood since the 1930s. Portions were notified as a slum in 1978 and again in 2002. In 2019, slum residents formed a proposed housing society and tied up with Saldanha Real Estate to redevelop the land. The Church trust objected, insisting that redevelopment should form part of a composite project covering its entire 10,000 sq. m. property, including adjacent areas..In May 2021, the trust filed its own proposal but the SRA rejected it for not being in the “prescribed format.” Instead, it took forward the society’s plan and began acquisition proceedings under Section 14 of the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971, claiming that the trust had missed the 120-day statutory window to submit a compliant scheme..The Bombay High Court in June 2024 set aside the acquisition, holding that the trust’s statutory right had been overlooked. The society, the developer, and the SRA (appellants) challenged that decision before the Supreme Court. .Before the apex court, the counsel for the society argued that the trust had long neglected the plight of slum dwellers and had defaulted in filing a proper scheme within time. The SRA defended its decision by pointing to the 2018 amendments to the Slums Act, which placed the onus on landowners to initiate redevelopment.The Church trust countered that its proposal was timely, if limitation was calculated from the date of formal communication of the slum declaration. It also relied on the Supreme Court’s own COVID-19 orders extending limitation periods. The trust further argued that its proposal could not be discarded on technicalities when it had already prepared a feasibility report and approached both the SRA and the municipal corporation. .The Supreme Court agreed with the trust and reaffirmed the principle that landowners have the first right to redevelop their own land.“The owner of a Slum Rehabilitation Area has a preferential right to develop it, and without giving due opportunity to exercise that right, the State or the SRA cannot proceed to acquire the land,” the bench said.It held that the SRA’s rejection of the trust’s proposal was arbitrary and contrary to both legislative intent and constitutional principles of fairness.Finding fault with the manner in which the SRA, the housing society and the developer had acted in tandem to sideline the trust, the Court concluded that the acquisition proceedings were vitiated.“The acquisition of the subject land, initiated without proper consideration of the owner’s proposal, is unsustainable in law,” the bench said, affirming the High Court’s judgment..The appellants (society, the developer, and the SRA) were represented by Senior Advocates Sudhanshu S Choudhari, Nikhil Sakhardande, and Shyam Divan along with advocates Amol Nirmalkumar Suryawanshi, Gautami Yadav, Srishty Pandey, Soura Subha Ghosh, Tavish Bhushan Prasad, Sanaya Patel, Shesh Raj Bharti, Soumya Dutta, Siddhant Upmanyu and Abhijeet Pandey.The respondent-trust was represented by Senior Advocates Milind Sathe and Chander Uday Singh along with advocates Bhushan Deshmukh, Neha Mehta, Harsh Lata, Umair Merchant, Aayushi Gohil, Bharat Bagla, Siddharth Dharmadhikari, Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Shrirang B. Varma, Varad Kilor, Amol Nirmalkumar Suryawanshi, Gautami Yadav, Srishty Pandey and Pranjal Chapalgaonkar.The State of Maharashtra was represented by Senior Advocate Shyam Mehta..[Read Judgment]
