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The Supreme Court connected Monday (October 13, 2025) held that onshore acquired for Tata Motors ‘Nano’ car task successful Singur, West Bengal would not beryllium restored to the concern entities that had been operating determination anterior to its acquisition, observing that specified enterprises possessed capable means to “vindicate their rights”.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi clarified the scope of the court’s 2016 ruling successful Kedar Nath Yadav v. State of West Bengal, which had quashed the acquisition proceedings for the Tata Motors works and directed that the onshore beryllium returned to its archetypal owners wrong 12 weeks.
The Bench said the 2016 verdict was intended to support the “genuinely defenceless”, and that specified extortion could not beryllium invoked by entities with the fiscal resources to contention governmental action.
‘Systemic barriers’
“Extraordinary judicial involution is warranted erstwhile systemic barriers forestall definite classes from accessing mean remedies, not erstwhile parties person capable means to vindicate their rights. Relief conceived to forestall impoverishment among the disadvantaged cannot widen to commercialized entities with fiscal capableness and organization sophistication,” the Bench observed portion interpreting the 2016 judgment.
The apical tribunal was proceeding a plea by the West Bengal authorities challenging a Calcutta High Court bid that had directed the State to reconstruct 28 bighas of land, on with existing structures, to Santi Ceramics Private Limited, which had operated a ceramic electrical insulator manufacturing portion successful Singur anterior to the 2006 acquisition for the Nano project.
Addressing structural vulnerability
Justice Kant, who authored the verdict, said the “remedial framework” successful Kedar Nath Yadav was intended for “poor cultivation workers” near destitute aft the acquisition of their onshore and sought to code this “structural vulnerability.” He noted that, dissimilar marginal farmers, the institution had been operating a 60,000-square-foot manufacturing installation employing implicit 100 workers since 2003, having purchased and converted cultivation onshore for concern use.
“In presumption of the supra analysis, we clasp that the reasoning successful Kedar Nath Yadav case does not enure to the payment of responsive No. 1 (Santi Ceramics). The restoration remedy was conceived for disadvantaged farming communities, not arsenic wide restitution for each affected parties,” the tribunal said.
The Bench further observed that allowing concern entities to assertion restoration benefits from litigation they had chosen not to prosecute would “incentivise strategical inaction” by enabling them to capitalise connected favourable alleviation obtained by others. Such an approach, it said, would foster “passive opportunism”, encouraging parties to stay “dormant” for years until favourable alleviation was secured by others.
‘Clear acquiescence’
The tribunal besides noted that the institution had voluntarily accepted ₹14.54 crore arsenic compensation, which constituted a “clear acquiescence” to the acquisition process.
“It accepted the full compensation magnitude without protestation and remained passive portion cultivators pursued litigation for years. Having chosen not to contention the acquisition done disposable statutory mechanisms, the responsive present seeks the aforesaid alleviation that was granted to disadvantaged communities done nationalist involvement litigation — a classical free-rider occupation that judicial remedies cannot encourage,” the Bench observed.
Accordingly, the tribunal permitted Santi Ceramics to region immoderate remaining structures and machinery from the onshore wrong 3 months, oregon alternatively, to petition the State to behaviour a nationalist auction. The company, it said, would beryllium entitled to the auction proceeds aft deducting the expenses incurred successful the process.
