Compulsory yet Fair Acquisition of Land: Assessing Procedural Fairness of Compulsory Acquisition Process in India

Abstract

Coerciveness built in the process of compulsory acquisition (CA) induces a perception of unfairness among the affected landowners and may alleviate with fair compensation and due process. This research focuses on the latter and aims to identify issues of unfairness perceived by the affected landowners using six criteria of procedural fairness from the legal literature including ethicality, representativeness, bias-suppression, accuracy, correctability and consistency. While procedural unfairness is a concern in many geographies (see for Scotland), this research adopts a case-study approach given the geographical specificity of CA laws and examines Indian process for its relatively recent mod..