Saldanha Real Estate Private Limited vs Bishop John Rodrigues and Others

Held: On facts and the colourable conduct of the appellants, the acquisition proceedings cannot be allowed to sustain – High Court rightly set aside these proceedings, protecting the statutory rights and interests of the Church Trust over the Subject Land and preventing the appellants from illegally grabbing it – Preliminary objection by the Society that the public notice was merely an invitation for objections to the acquisition proposal, and the approval order was simply a recommendation to the State fails – Where the solitary object of the notice and order, to acquire the Subject Land, the High Court was justified to intervene at a preliminary stage, in exercise of its plenary jurisdiction u/Art.226 – 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 – Notice and the order are traceable to the statutory framework of the Slums Act, and having been issued in purported exercise of statutory power were amenable to judicial review – On a bare perusal of the 2018 Amendment, it seems that no attempt has been made to remove or dilute the preferential right of the landowner to redevelop an SR Area – Tarabai’s case lead to only one conclusion, that the owner has a primary right to undertake development, and none of the provisions have been amended – s.3C(1) declaration is a stage prior to redevelopment being initiated u/s.13, and issuance of a notice u/s.3C is meant to accord hearing to a landowner and invite objections, if any, against declaration as an SR Area – Thus, it cannot be said that the new mechanism within s.3C no longer necessitates a separate notice-cum-invitation on the landowner – Claim of the appellants that the owner is expected to present an SR Scheme within 120 days of the s.3C(1) Declaration without any notice-cum-invitation wholly misconceived – On a conspectus of the 2018 Amendment and the perceived resultant variation on the pre-amendment legislative policy, the holistic interpretation of the Slums Act made in Tarabai’s case 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 – As regards the validity of acquisition, there vests a preferential right in favour of the Church Trust, over and above the SRA, occupants, or other stakeholders, to develop the Subject Land – Trust ought to have been invited by the SRA to submit a proposal and undertake such redevelopment after the declaration was issued – Thus, the SRA cannot proceed for acquisition of the Subject Land unless such a notice-cum-invitation is extended, and thereafter, the right of the Church Trust is extinguished if it fails to submit a redevelopment scheme within the prescribed period of 120 days – High Court rightly held that there was no compliance of these preconditions by the SRA before initiating the acquisition, and the entire process liable to be invalidated – High Court also rightly found from the conduct of the appellants that the acquisition proceedings arose from an exercise of power in bad faith – Furthermore, no notice-cum-invitation for redevelopment u/s.13 was issued to the Church Trust as such the Church Trust’s preferential right to redevelop the Subject Land remains intact and in the absence of a valid notice or opportunity, there existed no legal basis to extinguish this right, thus, the acquisition was, vitiated in law, falling afoul of the prescribed procedure – There was no waiver of preferential right to develop SR area – Adverse inferences drawn from the appellants’ disconcerting conduct throughout the acquisition proceedings – Record reveals a concerted and motivated attempt by the parties to acquire the Subject Land – SRA’s actions expose its attempts to thwart any possibility of the Church Trust exercising its preferential right – SRA and its CEO appear to have 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 the developer – 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 – Impugned judgement of the High Court upheld – Church Trust to submit an SR Scheme for the redevelopment of the Subject Slum, within a period of 120 days – SRA and the State to process the Church Trust’s proposal within 60 days – Constitution of India – Art. 226. [Paras 17 - 53]