Abstract
Andanayya & Ors. v. Deputy Chief Engineer & Ors., 2026 INSC 293, decided on 25 March 2026 by a Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Kotiswar Singh, resolves a question that has troubled Land Acquisition Collectors and High Courts for three decades: once a landowner has accepted re-determined compensation under Section 28-A of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, is a second application maintainable if a still-higher award is subsequently secured by similarly placed landowners in appeal? The court answered in the affirmative.
The Court held that the expression “Court” in Section 28-A extends to the High Court and the Supreme Court sitting in appeal, that the doctrine of merger dissolves the Reference Court’s award into the appellate decree, and that the beneficial, egalitarian purpose of Section 28-A cannot be defeated by treating an earlier, smaller receipt of compensation as an estoppel against a later, larger one. In doing so, the Bench declined to follow Ramsingbhai Jerambhai v. State of Gujarat (2018) 16 SCC 445—a decision it held to be rendered per incuriam of the earlier three-judge ruling in Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari—and it reaffirmed the Court’s own 2024 pronouncement to the same effect in Banwari & Ors. v. HSIIDC & Anr.
This treatise reconstructs the doctrinal lineage running from Pradeep Kumari (1995) through Bharatsing (2018) and Ramsingbhai Jerambhai (2018) to Banwari (2024) and Andanayya (2026).
I. The Statutory Scaffold: Section 28-A in Outline
Section 28-A was inserted into the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, by the 1984 Amendment as a corrective to a structural unfairness inherent in the reference procedure under Section 18. Where several landowners lose land under a single acquisition notification but only some of them seek a Section 18 reference — whether from want of means, want of information, or want of legal advice — those who stayed out would, absent Section 28-A, be permanently locked into the Land Acquisition Officer’s original, invariably conservative, award, even after their more litigious neighbours secured a substantially higher figure from the Reference Court. Section 28-A allows the non-referring landowner to apply, within three months of the relevant award, for re-determination of compensation on the same terms as those awarded to the similarly placed landowner who did seek a reference.
The provision is, on the Supreme Court’s own repeated description, dual in nature — expropriatory as to the taking, beneficial as to the paying — and it is the beneficial character of the compensation limb that has driven the Court, across three decades of litigation, toward a consistently liberal construction of what counts as an “award” and a “Court” for the purposes of the section.
II. Factual Matrix in Andanayya
The land in question was acquired for the Hubballi–Ankola Broad Gauge Railway Line in Karnataka. On 31 March 2003, the Land Acquisition Officer passed an award under Section 11 of the Act fixing compensation at ₹40,000 per acre. Certain landowners sought a reference under Section 18; the Reference Court enhanced the rate to ₹200,000 per acre. The present appellants, who had not sought a reference, invoked Section 28-A and were granted re-determined compensation at ₹200,000 per acre — parity with the Reference Court award.
Parallel appeals filed by the referring landowners were, meanwhile, pending before the Karnataka High Court, which in due course enhanced the rate further to ₹350,000 per acre. Within three months of that enhancement, the appellants filed a second application under Section 28-A seeking parity at the new, higher figure. The Land Acquisition Officer rejected the application as a second, and therefore impermissible, application; a Single Judge allowed the appellants’ writ petition, but the Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court reversed, holding that Section 28-A speaks only to awards of the Reference Court and that an appellate enhancement cannot found a fresh application. The landowners appealed to the Supreme Court.
III. The Doctrinal Lineage: Four Judgements Before Andanayya
The Division Bench’s restrictive reading did not emerge from nowhere; it drew on a genuine, decades-old fault line in the Supreme Court’s own case law. Reconstructing that fault line — rather than treating Andanayya as a bolt from the blue — is necessary to understand both the strength and the limits of the 2026 ruling.
A. Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari (1995) — The Liberal Foundation
In Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari, (1995) 2 SCC 736—a three-judge bench decision—the Supreme Court held that the word “award” in Section 28-A must be given its natural, unrestricted meaning: an award made by “the Court” under Part III of the Act after the section came into force, without any implied qualification confining it to the earliest such award. Reading in a word such as “first” that Parliament did not enact, the Court held, would impermissibly narrow a beneficial provision. This judgement is the fountainhead of every subsequent liberal reading of Section 28-A, including Andanayya.
B. Bharatsing v. State of Maharashtra (2018) — Procedure, Not Merger
In Bharatsing v. State of Maharashtra, (2018) 11 SCC 92: (2018) 5 SCC (Civ) 44, the landowners’ Section 28-A application had been decided by the Collector while an appeal against the very award relied upon was pending before the High Court; a second application, filed after the appellate enhancement, was held not maintainable on the facts of that case. The ratio that survives and matters for present purposes is procedural rather than substantive: the Court held that a Collector who is aware that the underlying award is under appeal ought to stay his hand and await the appellate outcome before finally determining a Section 28-A application, rather than deciding it piecemeal on the Reference Court figure and thereby precipitating exactly the kind of second application in dispute. Bharatsing is accordingly authority for the proposition that delay in adjudication should track the pendency of appeals — not, as is sometimes loosely suggested in secondary literature, authority for the doctrine of merger as such. Part VI records this correction in full.
C. Ramsingbhai Jerambhai v. State of Gujarat (2018) — The Restrictive Detour
In Ramsingbhai (Ramsangbhai) Jerambhai v. State of Gujarat (2018) 16 SCC 445, a co-equal bench read Section 28-A(1) narrowly on its text alone, holding that an application must be filed within three months of the Reference Court’s judgement under Section 18 and could not be anchored to a later High Court or Supreme Court judgement. Crucially, the judgement did not engage with Pradeep Kumari at all. It is this short, textual decision — untethered from the 1995 precedent — that the Karnataka High Court’s Division Bench relied upon in rejecting the appellants’ second application in Andanayya.
D. Banwari & Ors. v. HSIIDC & Anr. (2024) — The Per Incuriam Correction
The restrictive detour was corrected two years before Andanayya, in Banwari and Others v. Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (HSIIDC) and Another, 2024 INSC 951: [2024] 12 SCR 463, decided on 10 December 2024 by Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan. On facts closely resembling those in Andanayya—a Kundli–Manesar–Palwal Motorway acquisition, a Reference Court enhancement, a subsequent higher High Court award, and a Section 28-A application filed within three months of that higher award—the Bench held that Ramsingbhai Jerambhai could not be treated as binding precedent because it had failed to notice Pradeep Kumari, a decision of a Bench of equal strength decided twenty-three years earlier. Invoking the settled rule that a decision is per incuriam where its ratio cannot be reconciled with an earlier co-equal or larger Bench ruling — a rule for which the Court cited Sundeep Kumar Bafna v. State of Maharashtra, (2014) 16 SCC 623 — the Bench in Banwari restored the beneficial, appellate-inclusive reading of Section 28-A first laid down in Pradeep Kumari.
Andanayya’s contribution, then, is not the discovery of a new principle but the extension of an already-restored principle to a fact pattern Banwari did not squarely present: a landowner who had already received and accepted one round of Section 28-A compensation and who was met with the argument that acceptance of that earlier cheque operated as an election or estoppel foreclosing a further claim.
IV. The Court’s Reasoning in Andanayya
A. “Court” Includes the Appellate Forum
“The term ‘Court’ used in Section 28-A would include under its ambit the High Court and this Court as well. Any interpretation to the contrary would militate against the very objective of the Act, making Section 28-A of the Act redundant.”
— M.M. Sundresh, J., Andanayya (2026 INSC 293)
The Bench rejected the Division Bench’s textual confinement of Section 28-A to the Reference Court, holding that an appellate award is a continuation of the very same proceeding under Part III read with Section 54, and that excluding it from Section 28-A’s reach would strip the provision of practical effect in precisely the cases—successive, multi-tier enhancements—where its beneficial purpose is most needed.
B. The Doctrine of Merger Dissolves the Earlier Award
“Once an appellate court renders a decision, the earlier decree or order passed by the forum below ceases to exist on becoming subsumed or merged with the one passed by the appellate forum.”
— Andanayya (2026 INSC 293)
This formulation tracks the classical statement of the doctrine by the three-judge bench in Kunhayammed & Ors. v. State of Kerala, (2000) 6 SCC 359: “the logic underlying the doctrine of merger is that there cannot be more than one decree or operative order governing the same subject matter at a given point of time”—once the superior forum has disposed of the lis, its decree alone is final and executable, and the decree below merges into it, whether the superior order affirms, modifies, or reverses.
Applied to Section 28-A, the consequence is structural: the 2013 re-determination at ₹200,000 per acre did not survive as an independent, final award once the High Court’s ₹350,000-per-acre decree was rendered in the connected appeals; it was subsumed into that decree, leaving only one operative figure against which every similarly placed landowner, including the appellants, was entitled to test parity.
C. Acceptance of Money Is Neither Waiver Nor Estoppel
“The benefit of an enhanced compensation received by a landowner, consequent to the final award passed by the appellate forum, would also extend to similarly placed landowners who seek redetermination of compensation under Section 28-A of the Act. To put it differently, when ‘A’ obtains an award from the Reference Court, ‘B’ can also receive the benefit of the same by invoking Section 28-A of the Act. Similarly, when ‘A’ receives an enhancement from the High Court or this Court, ‘B’ is also entitled to receive the same enhancement, notwithstanding the earlier receipt of money under Section 28-A of the Act based upon the award of the Reference Court.”
— Andanayya (2026 INSC 293)
The Court held that permitting estoppel, waiver, or acquiescence to operate on the strength of an earlier, smaller receipt would convert a beneficial provision into a trap: a landowner who promptly accepted the Reference Court parity figure — the very diligence Section 28-A is meant to reward — would end up worse off than one who delayed and waited for the appellate figure to crystallise before applying even once. That inversion of incentives, the Bench held, cannot be what Parliament intended.
D. “One Application” Applies Per Operative Award, Not Per Lifetime
The Court harmonised its holding with the settled rule — traceable to Bharatsing and to the general scheme of Section 28-A — that only one application is maintainable in respect of any single, given award. That rule, the Bench clarified, restrains repetitive applications chasing the same award; it does not restrain a fresh application triggered by the emergence of a new, superseding operative award following the doctrine of merger. On this reading, Andanayya does not create an exception to the “one application” rule so much as it defines, more precisely than before, what counts as one award for the rule to bite on.
V. Operative Directions
The Supreme Court allowed the appeals, set aside the judgement of the Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court, and directed the Land Acquisition Officer/Collector to re-determine compensation payable to the appellants at ₹3,50,000 per acre — parity with the High Court’s enhanced award — within eight weeks.
VI. A Correction: What Bharatsing Actually Decided
A recurring imprecision in commentary on this line of cases — and one this chamber corrects rather than perpetuates, consistent with its citation-integrity protocol — is the attribution to Bharatsing v. State of Maharashtra (2018) 11 SCC 92 of the proposition that a trial court’s decree merges into the appellate decree and that compensation “finality” is attained only at the highest appellate level. That proposition is sound law, but its source is the general doctrine of merger as expounded in Kunhayammed (2000) and applied afresh in Andanayya itself (2026)—not Bharatsing.
Bharatsing’s own holding is narrower and procedural: on facts where a Section 28-A application had been decided by the Collector while the underlying awards stood in appeal, the Court held that a second application filed after the appeal concluded was, on those facts, not maintainable — while simultaneously criticising the Collector for having decided the first application without awaiting the pending appeal. Andanayya itself expressly distinguishes Bharatsing on this footing rather than overruling it: the appellants in Andanayya, unlike those in Bharatsing, were not shown to have been aware of the pending appeals at the time their first application was decided, and the Collector’s own conduct in deciding prematurely was held to work against, not for, a finding of estoppel. Citing Bharatsing for a merger proposition it does not, on a plain reading of its own text, actually contain is accordingly avoided in this treatise; the correct authority for that proposition is identified in each instance above.
VII. Practical Implications
For Landowners
- ☐ Accepting an earlier Section 28-A payment does not extinguish the right to a further application if a higher court subsequently enhances compensation for similarly placed landowners in the same acquisition.
- ☐ Track appeals filed by other landowners under the same notification — an enhancement obtained by a neighbour, at any tier, can found a fresh application.
- ☐ The three-month limitation period is strict and runs from the date of the appellate award relied upon; delay defeats the claim regardless of merit (see Ramsingbhai Jerambhai and Banwari on limitation).
- ☐ Frame the application expressly as seeking parity with the appellate — not the Reference Court — award, and plead the doctrine of merger to pre-empt a “second application” objection.
For Collectors / Land Acquisition Officers
- ☐ Where an appeal against the Reference Court award is known to be pending, stay the Section 28-A application and await the appellate outcome, per Bharatsing.
- ☐ Treat the appellate award, once rendered, as the sole operative award for re-determination purposes; the Reference Court figure no longer exists independently.
- ☐ Do not reject a second application merely because an earlier application was decided and paid out — examine whether it is anchored to a new, superseding award.
For Courts and Tribunals
- ☐ Avoid a rigid, textual reading of “one application” that ignores the doctrine of merger; apply the rule per operative award, not per applicant’s lifetime.
- ☐ Where a prior co-equal Bench decision appears not to have considered earlier binding precedent, test it against the per incuriam principle in Sundeep Kumar Bafna before treating it as authoritative.
- ☐ Construe Section 28-A, as a beneficial provision, to advance rather than restrict the egalitarian object identified in Pradeep Kumari.
VIII. Further Authorities Bearing on the Doctrine
- Jose Antonio Cruz Dos R. Rodriguese v. LAO, (1996) 6 SCC 746—an early authority on the scope of “award” and “Court” under Part III of the Act, invoked in both Banwari and Andanayya in tracing the restrictive reading that the Court ultimately declined to follow.
- Sundeep Kumar Bafna v. State of Maharashtra, (2014) 16 SCC 623 — the general authority for the proposition that a decision is per incuriam and loses its character as binding precedent where its ratio cannot be reconciled with a previously pronounced judgement of a co-equal or larger bench. This is the doctrinal engine that allowed Banwari, and then Andanayya, to set aside Ramsingbhai Jerambhai without the need for a reference to a larger bench.
- Kunhayammed & Ors. v. State of Kerala, (2000) 6 SCC 359 — the leading three-Judge Bench exposition of the doctrine of merger in Indian law, and the analytical source for Andanayya’s holding that the Reference Court’s award ceases to have independent existence once an appellate decree is rendered.
IX. Citation Ledger
| Judgement | Citation | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Andanayya & Ors. v. Deputy Chief Engineer & Ors. | 2026 INSC 293 | |
| Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari | (1995) 2 SCC 736: 1995 INSC 180 | Three-Judge Bench: foundational liberal-construction authority. |
| Bharatsing v. State of Maharashtra | (2018) 11 SCC 92: (2018) 5 SCC (Civ) 44 | Not authority for the merger doctrine as such. |
| Ramsingbhai (Ramsangbhai) Jerambhai v. State of Gujarat | (2018) 16 SCC 445 | Held per incuriam in Banwari (2024) and reaffirmed in Andanayya (2026). |
| Banwari & Ors. v. HSIIDC & Anr. | 2024 INSC 951: [2024] 12 SCR 463 | Immediate precursor to Andanayya on the per incuriam point. |
| Kunhayammed & Ors. v. State of Kerala | (2000) 6 SCC 359 | General doctrine-of-merger authority, added for doctrinal completeness. |
| Jose Antonio Cruz Dos R. Rodriguese v. LAO | (1996) 6 SCC 746 | Early scope authority, cited in both Banwari and Andanayya. |
| Sundeep Kumar Bafna v. State of Maharashtra | (2014) 16 SCC 623 | General per incuriam doctrine, added for doctrinal completeness. |
X. Conclusion
Andanayya does not announce a new principle so much as it completes one. Pradeep Kumari supplied the liberal premise in 1995; Bharatsing supplied a procedural safeguard in 2018; Ramsingbhai Jerambhai supplied a textual detour, also in 2018, that ignored the first of these; Banwari corrected that detour in 2024; and Andanayya, in 2026, extends the corrected doctrine to its logical endpoint — a landowner’s earlier, smaller recovery cannot be turned against them when a later, larger recovery becomes available to similarly placed neighbours through the ordinary operation of the doctrine of merger.
For landowners, the judgement is a reassurance that promptness in accepting compensation carries no penalty. For collectors, it is a directive to track pending appeals before finally disposing of Section 28-A applications. For courts, it is a reminder — consistent with the per incuriam jurisprudence traced above — that a short, textual judgement which overlooks binding precedent does not acquire authority merely by being more recent.
Written By: Inder Chand Jain
Ph no: 8279945021, Email: [email protected]
