A defence laboratory cannot be built around the plots left out of it, and the acquisition is restored
Thirty-nine years after the first notification, the Karnataka High Court has set aside a Single Judge’s order quashing the acquisition of about an acre and a half next to a DRDO artificial intelligence laboratory in Bengaluru.
The lands are small: five survey numbers at Benniganahalli village in Bengaluru East Taluk, together a little over an acre and a half — one acre and three guntas, then ten guntas, five, three and six. They sit next to the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
On 21 September 2026, in writ appeals filed in 2015, a Bench of Justice D.K. Singh and Justice H. Shanthi Bhushan allowed the Union of India’s appeals and restored the acquisition a Single Judge had quashed.
Thirty-nine years of notifications
The file begins with a preliminary notification of January 1987. Awards in respect of other lands in the same acquisition were passed between 1991 and 1993, and possession of a substantial portion was handed to the defence authorities during 1993 and 1994. No award was passed within the prescribed period for the lands now in dispute.
Some lands were de-notified by the State Government. That de-notification was challenged in writ petitions dismissed in January 2000 on delay and laches; writ appeals from that were partly allowed in August 2000; and the remaining dispute reached the Supreme Court, where it was settled by compromise.
Because the award on these particular lands had lapsed for want of time, the authorities issued a fresh preliminary notification in June 2005 under Section 4(1) read with Sections 17(1) and 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 — that is, invoking the urgency provisions, which permit the enquiry under Section 5-A to be dispensed with.
The landowners challenged that, and in August 2008 the High Court partly allowed their petition: it quashed the invocation of the urgency clause and directed the authorities to hold a Section 5-A enquiry. The acquisition itself was not struck down; the owners were to get their hearing.
The challenge that produced these appeals was directed principally at the final declaration under Section 6(1) issued after that enquiry, on the ground that the objections had not been properly considered. The Single Judge accepted it and quashed the acquisition proceedings in their entirety. The Union appealed.
What the landowners argued
The owners claimed to be in possession and enjoyment of the lands, and relied on the line of Supreme Court authority restricting the use of urgency powers and insisting on a real Section 5-A enquiry — Dev Sharan v. State of U.P. (2011) 4 SCC 769, Radhy Shyam v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2011) 5 SCC 553, and Women’s Education Trust v. State of Haryana (2013) 8 SCC 99, which itself draws on Kamal Trading (P) Ltd. v. State of W.B. (2012) 2 SCC 25.
Substantial compliance, and what the project is for
The Division Bench’s answer runs on two tracks.
The first is a standard of review. Where the acquisition is for a genuine public purpose, the statutory procedure has been substantially followed, and the landowners have been afforded an opportunity to place their objections, the proceedings cannot be invalidated on technical or hyper-technical grounds. On the material, the Bench found no fundamental or incurable violation of statutory procedure of the kind that would warrant annulling the acquisition in its entirety.
The second is the character of the project, and the judgment opens with it rather than burying it. National security, it says, is paramount and must take precedence over individual interests; personal rights, undoubtedly precious, cannot be asserted in a manner that compromises the safety and security of the nation.
Applied to these facts, the Bench treats the identity of the acquiring body as a relevant consideration rather than a formality. CAIR is a premier defence laboratory engaged in advanced technological research for national defence. In an era where threats to national security are increasingly shaped by technology, automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, its continued research is held essential to the country’s defence preparedness.
Why the shape of the land mattered
The most transferable part of the reasoning concerns geography rather than law.
The lands fall within the protected area of the defence establishment. Retaining them outside the project area would not merely delay the CAIR project; it could create difficulties in maintaining the security, continuity and integrity of the facility. The requirement of a compact and protected area, the Bench holds, is itself a relevant consideration in a defence acquisition.
Authorities cannot be expected to proceed with a defence installation while leaving intervening or adjoining parcels outside the protected perimeter, where those parcels are found necessary for the project. The acquisition therefore had to be considered in the setting of the entire defence establishment, and not as an isolated dispute about a few parcels of land.
What the landowners keep
The judgment is careful to separate the validity of the acquisition from the money.
The owners’ rights in respect of compensation, the award, apportionment and disbursement remain protected under the applicable law. Any dispute about the quantum or the payment of compensation must be pursued through the statutory remedies provided for that purpose — and, absent a jurisdictional or legal defect in the acquisition itself, cannot furnish a ground for quashing the acquisition proceedings.
The writ appeals were allowed and the Single Judge’s order set aside in its entirety. A cross-objection was rejected on delay and laches and, in the alternative, dismissed as infructuous once the appeals succeeded, its foundation having gone with the order it attacked.