Kochi, Jul 18 (PTI) The Kerala High Court has declared as unconstitutional a law that vested all mineral rights in the Malabar region in the state government.
A bench of Justices A K Jayasankaran Nambiar and Preeta A K held that the Kerala Minerals (Vesting of Rights) Act, 2021, does not qualify as a valid law authorising the deprivation of property under Article 300A of the Constitution.
Article 300A provides that no person shall be deprived of their property except by the authority of law.
The bench said the Act under challenge contained no provisions dealing with the compensation payable to landowners whose rights over the minerals in the soil and subsoil of their property were being acquired by the government.
The court said the impugned legislation did not satisfy the requirements of Articles 14, 19 and 21 and was, therefore, invalid for the purposes of Article 300A of the Constitution.
It noted that the Supreme Court had ruled that when private persons are deprived of ownership and control of the material resources belonging to or controlled by them, they must be compensated justly and fairly.
“Otherwise, the conversion of private material resources into resources of the community would be contrary to Article 300A of the Constitution, which states that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law,” the High Court said.
The division bench’s July 17 ruling came on several appeals filed by landowners from the Malabar region challenging a single judge’s order that had upheld the validity of the Act.
The landowners challenged the Act’s validity after the state served them notices demanding payment of royalty on the minerals extracted by them.
The state government had also appealed against the single judge’s order, which held that it could not demand royalty for the period prior to December 30, 2019, the date on which the Act came into effect.
The division bench allowed the landowners’ appeals and set aside the single judge’s order insofar as it upheld the constitutional validity of the Act.
The bench held that the landowners were entitled to a refund of the royalty collected from them pursuant to the enactment.
It further set aside the single judge’s finding that one of the landowners was liable to pay royalty to the state for the period prior to December 30, 2019, and directed that any amount collected from the petitioner be refunded within three months.
The bench dismissed the appeals filed by the state government against the single judge’s order.
On Saturday, the CPI(M) state secretariat demanded that the government appeal against the division bench’s order in the Supreme Court.
In a statement, the CPI(M) state secretariat said the division bench’s verdict had invalidated a law enacted with the constitutional objective of ensuring control over and equitable distribution of natural resources for the benefit of the general public.
It said that under the erstwhile royal proclamations in the Thiruvananthapuram and Cochin regions, the government held rights over mineral wealth on private land. However, in the Malabar region, those rights belonged to the landowners.
It said that this was the reason the Kerala Minerals (Vesting of Rights) Act, 2021, was enacted.
The CPI(M) said that if the Act were declared unconstitutional, it could lead to a lack of control over the use of natural resources. PTI HMP SSK
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