Forcible dispossession of a person’s property is a human rights violation: Supreme Court

Key Facts

• The Supreme Court has reiterated that forcible dispossession of a person of his private property without due process of law is a violation of human rights.
• The court stressed that right to property is both a human right and a constitutional right — the latter under Article 300A of the Constitution.
• It is accepted in every jurisprudence and by different political thinkers that some amount of property right is an indispensable safeguard against tyranny and economic oppression of the government... The property itself is the seedbed which must be conserved if other constitutional values are to flourish
• Article 300A

• Right to Property is no longer a fundamental right, rather it is a Constitutional Right and now exists in Article 300A.
• Article 300A states that - No person shall be deprived of his property save by the authority of law.
• Therefore, the article protects an individual from interference by the State and dispossess a person of the property unless it is by the procedure established by law.
• Though compensation is not expressly mentioned in the Article, in K.T Plantation Pvt. Ltd. Vs. The state of Karnataka, 2011 the SC held that public purpose was a pre-condition for deprivation of a person of his property under Article 300A of the Constitution and the right to claim compensation was also inbuilt in that Article. In the case, the then CJI S.H. Kapadia said that -“The requirement of public purpose is invariably the rule for depriving a person of his property, violation of which is amenable to judicial review. Acquisition of property for a public purpose may meet with a lot of contingencies, like deprivation of livelihood, leading to violation of Article 21, but that per se is not a ground to strike down a statute or its provisions.” Notes on Article 300A
• If the State intends to appropriate private property without the owner’s consent by acting under statutory provisions for compulsory acquisition, the procedure authorized by law has to be mandatorily and compulsorily followed.
• In-State of Jharkhand vs. Jitendra Kumar Srivastava, 2013, the SC held that pension is not a bounty but it is a property and cannot be taken away without complying with due process of law.
• The right to property includes within it the right to use the property by the law as it stands at a particular time.
• In Tukaram Kana Joshi vs M.I.D.C, 2013 the SC said that human rights are a domain under individual rights and are gaining a bigger multi-faceted dimension and the Right to property is a part of this new dimension.
• Section 29 of the State Finance Corporations Act 1951 deals with the Rights of Financial Corporation in case of default. The corporation has the power to take possession of the property of an individual concerned if the latter defaults on payment of any loan or advance or any installment and such action of possession are not violative of Articles 14, 19, 21 or 300A of the constitution.

Source: The Hindu