SC: Justice Mishra won’t recuse from hearing land grab case - Four Other Judges On Bench Back His Decision

Source: Times of India dated 24.10.2019

The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down a plea seeking recusal of Justice Arun Mishra from the Constitution bench hearing a batch of petitions relating to land acquisition law, and decided to hear the case on a dayto-day basis from November 6.

The plea for recusal of Justice Mishra, who heads the bench that is hearing the matter, was made by parties, including farmer associations, who argued that the judge was also on a bench whose verdict in land acquisition case is to be examined by the Constitution bench headed by him.

Justices Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran, M R Shah and S Ravindra Bhat are other members of the bench. Backed by other four judges, Justice Mishra said, “I am not recusing from hearing this matter.” The grounds on which the recusal plea was dismissed could not be immediately known as the judgment was yet to be uploaded on SC website.

While hearing the plea, Justice Mishra had made it clear that he would not withdraw from the Constitution bench as the grounds raised by the parties to seek his recusal were not valid. Allaying their apprehensions that he may be biased while hearing the case, the judge had said, “If I feel that I may be influenced then I will be the first person to recuse...”

The Constitution bench was set up by the Chief Justice of India to examine the correctness of contradictory judgments delivered by two benches of the SC, both comprising three judges. The two contrasting verdicts, which are to be reviewed, deal with the issue of whether farmers who had refused to accept compensation for land acquired from them could be deemed to have been compensated if the government had gone ahead and deposited the money with the treasury or a court.

In the 2014 Pune Municipal Authority case involving interpretation of the new law, a three-judge bench said the state depositing compensation in its own treasury cannot be deemed as landowners having been paid. It said such farmers could be deemed to have been compensated only if the money had been deposited with the court and if they had been paid higher rate of interest.

But in February 2018, a three-judge bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra, Adarsh Goel and Mohan Shantanagoudar ruled in Indore Development Authority case that compensation was deemed to have been paid if government had deposited it in the treasury and there was no obligation to deposit it in court.

Another 3-judge bench noticed the contradictions in the two judgements and stayed all cases until the question relating to Section 24(2) of the Right to Fair Compensation And Transparency in land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 was settled.