Justice Surya Kant, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, Supreme Court
Holistic Interpretation Of Slums Act In Tarabai Case Is Squarely Applicable On Post 2018 Amendment Actions: Supreme Court
|The Supreme Court said that mere absence of any direct impact on the entitlement of the Church Trust does not take away from the administrative nature of the notice and the Order or the jurisdiction of the High Court to consider their validity.
The Supreme Court held that the holistic interpretation of the Slums Act made in its recent Judgment in the case of Tarabai Nagar Co-Op. Hog. Society (Proposed) v. The State of Maharashtra and others (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 1015) is squarely applicable on post-2018 Amendment actions/events, barring the now legislatively stipulated timeline within which a redevelopment scheme has to be submitted by an interested landowner.
The Court was deciding Civil Appeals concerning the validity of the acquisition of a portion of land under the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971 (Slums Act).
The two-Judge Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan observed, “On a conspectus of the 2018 Amendment and the perceived resultant variation on the pre-amendment legislative policy, we are satisfied that the holistic interpretation of the Slums Act made by this Court in Tarabai (supra) is also squarely applicable on post-2018 Amendment actions/events, barring the now legislatively stipulated timeline within which a redevelopment scheme has to be submitted by an interested landowner. It, then, goes without saying that SRA’s actions initiating the acquisition in the instant case must also be tested against the same principles, which we shall now proceed to assess in the following issue.”
The Bench said that mere absence of any direct impact on the entitlement of the Church Trust does not take away from the administrative nature of the notice and the Order or the jurisdiction of the High Court to consider their validity.
Factual Background
The Bombay High Court had allowed a Writ Petition filed by the landowner, declaring the acquisition of the subject land as void. It directed the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) to consider the proposal of the landowner for redevelopment. A plot was owned by the Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount (Church Trust), a Public Trust based in Mumbai. At the relevant time, Bishop John Rodrigues served as the Rector and the sole trustee. The subject land was part of the larger plot. The same was encroached upon by hutment dwellers since the 1930s, and a section admeasuring 1,334 sq. m. was thereupon declared a Slum Area under Section 4 of the Slums Act.
Over time, the hutment area (Subject Slum) expanded, and the notification was amended. In the intervening period, the dwellers of the subject slum formed the Shri Kadeshwari Cooperative Housing Society Ltd. (Proposed). The High Court had held that the Church Trust had a preferential right to develop the subject land. The Appeals were thus preferred by the proposed housing society of slum dwellers, the developer selected by the said society, and the SRA before the Apex Court.
Reasoning
The Supreme Court in the above context of the case, noted, “… the High Court, in exercise of its plenary jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, can prevent or annul any executive overreach, arbitrary decision-making process, action tainted with mala fides, or colourable exercise of power. Where the solitary object of the notice and order, namely, to acquire the Subject Land, has not been disputed by the SRA, the High Court was justified to intervene at a preliminary stage. Not doing so would have invited more complications on account of creation of third-party rights by the private builder and consequential multiplicity of litigation.”
The Court said that the notice and the Order are traceable to the statutory framework of the Slums Act, especially in Section 14, and the same having been issued in purported exercise of statutory power were amenable to judicial review.
“Therefore, these actions must be taken strictly in accordance with the legislative framework, and any challenge that raises questions about the legality and integrity of such acts is maintainable under Article 226. This preliminary objection raised by the Appellants, thus, would fail. The appeals must, instead, be considered on their merits”, it added.
The Court was of the view that in the absence of a valid notice or opportunity, there existed no legal basis to extinguish this right and the acquisition was, therefore, vitiated in law, falling afoul of the prescribed procedure.
“Given the above findings in respect of the invitation to the Church Trust and its persistent effort to redevelop the Subject Land, the prerequisites of initiating an acquisition under Section 14,30 as laid out in Tarabai (supra), have not been fulfilled. The High Court has thus made no error in holding that the acquisition ought to be ex facie illegal”, it further held.
Considering the other side of the coin, the Court remarked that the manner in which the SRA and its functionaries have approached this case is even more shocking.
“The record reveals a dire lack of application of mind or any objective and coherent reasoning in the decisions of the SRA. … Despite the judgement of the High Court in Indian Cork Mills (supra) continuing to hold the field, the SRA’s actions expose its attempts to thwart any possibility of the Church Trust exercising its preferential right”, it said.
The Court also observed that throughout this case, the SRA and its CEO abandoned their public duty to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the rights of the landowner.
“On the contrary, the facts reveal a prejudiced attempt by the SRA to undermine legislative and judicial efforts and hand over the Subject Land and the benefits of its rehabilitation to Saldanha. Such actions of a public authority, marred by collusion and connivance and motivated by extraneous profit interests of private builders, are highly depreciable and underline the possibility of bureaucratic misuse of statutory provisions”, it said.
Conclusion
Furthermore, the Court emphasised the need for practical and actionable safeguards in a legal system involving competing interests among private parties.
“The Slums Act, while providing wholesome protection to slum dwellers and their homes and livelihood, does not give such express protection to the interests of the owner of the land. The ensuing vacuum, as we have seen in these appeals, allows opportunistic developers to swoop in, exploit the circumstances of the poor slum dwellers, manipulate the hand-in-glove authorities, and enrich themselves off the helpless owner’s land”, it added.
The Court, therefore, concluded that the acquisition proceedings cannot be allowed to sustain and as such, the High Court rightly nipped these proceedings in the bud, protecting the statutory rights and interests of the Church Trust over the subject land and preventing the Appellants from illegally grabbing it.
Accordingly, the Apex Court dismissed the Appeals and upheld the impugned Judgment.
Cause Title- Saldanha Real Estate Private Limited v. Bishop John Rodrigues and Others (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 1016)
Appearance:
Senior Advocates Shyam Divan, Sudhanshu S. Choudhari, Nikhil Sakhardande, Milind Sathe, Chander Uday Singh, Shyam Mehta, AORs Amol Nirmalkumar Suryawanshi, Harsh Lata, Tavish Bhushan Prasad, Soumya Dutta, Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Advocates Gautami Yadav, Srishty Pandey, Pranjal Chapalgaonkar, Sanaya Patel, Shesh Raj Bharti, Siddhant Upmanyu, Abhijeet Pandey, Siddharth Dharmadhikari, Shrirang B. Varma, Varad Kilor, Soura Subha Ghosh, and Bharat Bagla.