Madras High Court refuses to return Chennai prime property

Chennai: In a landmark order, the Madras HC has refused to return a prime piece of land, worth Rs 100 crore, opposite Raj Bhavan, to members of an affluent family and recalled its own division bench order of  2013.

A Division bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and K. Ravichandrabaabu has recalled an order of a division bench which directed authorities to re-convey the property to the family members of original land owner 45 years after government took possession of it for taking pittance as compensation.

The bench passed the order relying on various documents and material including a Government Note File dated April 13, 1963 which was signed by the then CM K.Kamaraj and other officials.  

The land, measuring acres 1.62 acres (or about 70,632 sq.feet), now valued even as per the government guidelines, at more than '100 crore is opposite Raj Bhavan and adjoining  Anna University.

Ramakrishna had neither challenged the acquisition proceedings nor questioned the quantum of compensation. The land was taken into possession on November 24 1960 from Manali Ramakrishna for compensation of Rs 33,941.

However, exactly 45 years later, his wife M.R. Suseela, his son and children of the brother of Manali Ramakrishna joined together and gave representations seeking re-conveyance of the lands. They sought direction since the lands were not used for the purpose for which they were acquired.

A single judge in 2007 ordered reconveyence of the land to the original land owners, after more than 45 years of acquisition by the government and for payment of compensation Rs 33,947.60. A division bench upheld the order in 2013.

This generated a lot of controversy. The Bench has now passed a common order on three writ appeals, a review petition and one contempt petition. It said that unfortunately they projected their case as though some land in a village known as Venkatapuram was acquired by Government more than four decades ago and the government did not put it to use  thereby enabling them to make a claim for re-conveyance. The bench said the Tamil Nadu government had made out a case for review of  2013 judgment.