The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by the Mizo Chief’s Council claiming absolute ownership of the land in the erstwhile Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) and seeking enhanced compensation, settling a decade-long legal dispute over lands acquired by the state under a 1954 law.
Bringing the curtain down on the land tussle involving the entire state, the court held that the Mizo Council were not the owners of the land as they had failed to provide any conclusive evidence to support their claim.
The council had approached the Supreme Court in 2014, challenging the validity of the Assam Loshai Hills District (Acquisition of Rights of Chiefs) Act, 1954 and a subsequent notification dated March 23, 1955, under which the rights and interests of chiefs in their lands were transferred to the state and vested “absolutely”. At the time the law was passed, the Mizzou Council had 259 presidents who received their total salaries $14,78,980 as compensation under the law.
“In proving ownership of the land, the petitioners have relied primarily on the narratives and writings of scholars and officials of the British government. After careful scrutiny of the said materials, it is very ambiguous at the outset whether these texts unambiguously recognize the Mizo chiefs as the absolute owners of the land,” a bench of Justices JP Pardiwala and R Mahadevan said.
“It is legally unacceptable for this court to adopt a decision of this magnitude on the shaky foundation of such flimsy submissions and woefully inadequate evidence,” the court said, accusing the petitioners of dealing with “a very complex legal question” in such a simplistic and superficial manner without presenting alternative evidence.
The Mizo Council relied on boundary papers submitted by British rulers who demarcated the territorial boundaries of each chief. But the court said these documents failed “remotely” to grant or recognize their absolute ownership of the land.
“The petitioners have woefully failed to discharge the burden of proving their ownership of the land in question… To prove such an exorbitant claim, the petitioner had to rely on alternative sources of evidence, such as government documents, official notifications, and administrative orders, to build a coherent understanding of their alleged ownership,” the bench said.
The petition was opposed by the Centre, led by Attorney General R Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who said the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction could not be invoked to reignite settled matters that culminated in 1955. Both the Center and the Mizoram government argued that any customary authority exercised by chiefs historically had been extinguished after the advent of British administration in the Lushai Hills region, which now constitutes the state.
The Attorney General said: “The entire region was placed under the supervision of British officials, and the chiefs were reduced to mere intermediaries, exercising administrative control over specific areas of land strictly on the basis of boundary papers issued by the British regime.” Furthermore, he emphasized that the law had dissolved the traditional chieftaincy system practiced on their respective lands and that the legal compensation offered to them was to compensate for the loss of these specific administrative rights.
The Court held that the impugned law dates back to a period when the right to property under Articles 19(1)(f) and 31 was a fundamental right under Part III of the Constitution. This right ceased to be a fundamental right only with the passage of the Constitution (Forty-Fourth Amendment) Act, 1978. “To successfully prove violation of their fundamental right to property, the petitioner must necessarily succeed on two different fronts – he must prove clear ownership of the Mizo chiefs over the subject lands and only when ownership is established do they have to fulfill the other criteria under Article 31 which states: No person shall be deprived of his property without the authority of law.
Since ownership of the land had not been proven, the court held that there was no violation of fundamental rights. Even on the long delay in challenging the 1955 notification, the bench took a lenient view and said: “It is undeniable that there has been inordinate delay of nearly six decades… When this Court is faced with allegations that are closely linked to notions of historical wrong or systemic injustice, the judicial scales must be largely tipped in favor of granting access to the Court.”
