The State government and its authorities, in future, cannot exempt horticulture nurseries from acquisition of lands for any project, without bringing in a regulatory regime for recognition of nurseries, the High Court of Karnataka has declared.
Leaving out the nurseries from acquisition based on a Government Order issued on January 1, 1987, “must stop forthwith,” the court said, while making it clear that “henceforth, if the acquiring authorities under the respective statutes want to exempt a nursery, they can do so only after bringing in a regulatory regime for recognition of such nurseries.” It is for the State to take appropriate action to bring in regulatory regime, the court said.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Krishna S. Dixit and Justice M. Nagaprasanna delivered the verdict while rejecting petition filed by 91-year-old B. Sathyanarayanachar, who had questioned acquisition of his one-acre land, claiming it to be a ‘nursery’, for Dr. Shivarama Karanth layout being formed by the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA). The apex court-appointed committee too had rejected his claim.
Pointing out that the laws, under which the BDA had notified the lands for acquisition for the layout, does not exempt nurseries from acquisition, the Bench said that “a Government Order cannot override a statue and the order of 1987 has no statutory legs to stand.”
‘Used and misused’
The 1987 Government Order states that “nurseries are exempted from acquisition by BDA but if owners of these nurseries discontinue use of lands for nurseries then the lands will be acquired by the BDA.”
The Bench pointed out that the Government Order of 1987, which was issued based on a representation given in 1986 to the then Chief Minister by the Nurserymen Cooperative Society Ltd., Lalbagh, on a specific scheme of BDA but this Government Order has been used by many land owners to claim exemption of acquisition of their lands claiming them to be nurseries.
“In our considered view, the Government Order of 1987 which was case specific, being used or misused to get exemption from acquisition till this day, the Bench observed.
No law in Karnataka
There is no statute governing the regulation or recognition of nursery in the State of Karnataka, the Bench pointed out while noticing that it is not a case where nurseries are not regulated by any State in the country as there a few States, which regulate nursery by statutes.
The Court noted that Telangana, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Maharashtra, and Jammu and Kashmir, Tripura have enacted law, some way back in 1961 to recognise and regulate nurseries.
NHB accreditation
Since no regulatory regime is in place in the State of Karnataka, “they [nurseries] should be registered with the National Horticulture Board (NHB) it has a method of accreditation of nurseries, till the State would bring any regulatory regime in place. There are plethora of nurseries registered with the NHB. It is those nurseries only which can be brought within the term ‘nursery’ and cannot be vaguely determined by case specific government orders,” the Bench said.
For any person to claim that he is running a nursery, the prescription would be that the plants be grown there, on a regular business, for transplantation, sale, propagation or other scientific necessities, the Bench said while referring to dictionary meaning of word ‘nursery’ and its definitions in the laws enacted in other States. The Bench also said that mere keeping of plants and selling them would not mean that it is a nursery or nursery farming.
However, in case of the petitioner, the Court said that there is no evidence, even before the committee set up by the apex court, that it was nursery, and the Google earth images taken even in 2021 showed it as a vacant land.
Published - November 01, 2024 08:27 pm IST
