NEW DELHI: A 3-judge bench of the
Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down the Centre's objections to its seeking to scrutinise a verdict of another bench of the same strength which had upheld the Prevention of
Money Laundering Act, saying that its decision was not unprecedented and pointing out to the apex court having done a similar exercise on the interpretation of land acquisition law.
Addressing the Centre's stiff opposition to the hearing after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had submitted that the scrutiny of a 3-judge bench by another bench of the same strength would set a wrong precedent, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi said “it is permitted”. “We are here to look whether review is needed and whether it should be sent to a five-judge bench. A three-judge bench had earlier also differed with another three-judge bench and the matter was referred to a larger bench. It happened in the land acquisition case in which you also appeared,” the bench told the solicitor general.
The court was referring to an order passed by a three-judge bench on February 8, 2018 declaring the previous 2014 judgement, also by a three-judge bench, as per incuriam (without care for law or facts). The divergent views of the two benches was on the interpretation of Section 24(2) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
A bench of Justices R M Lodha, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph had in 2014 held that compensation in lieu of cost of the land, unless paid into the account of the landowner, couldn’t effectively be taken as payment made to him.
It had held that even if the compensation amount was deposited in the government treasury, it can’t be held to be equivalent to compensation paid to the landowners.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Adarsh Kumar Goel and Mohan M Shantanagoudar in 2018 expressed its disagreement with the 2014 ruling and held that it needed to be re-examined and referred the controversy to a five-judge bench for adjudication.