State ignored a playground reservation for 14 years. Court said: too late.

Two plots, a playground reservation, and a timeline the State couldn't beat

In 2002, Laxmikant and other landowners in Latur, Maharashtra, bought plots that came with a catch. The city's development plan, published under Section 31(6) of the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, had reserved their land as Site No. 217 — a playground. They couldn't build. They couldn't sell freely. They could only wait for the municipal corporation to acquire the land and pay compensation.

The wait stretched fourteen years. The corporation did nothing. No acquisition declaration under Section 126. No purchase. No compensation. The landowners were stuck with land they couldn't use, while the city held a reservation it never acted on.

When the Supreme Court finally heard the case on March 23, 2022, the stakes were simple: could a court give the State more time to acquire land after the statute said time was up? The answer, delivered by a Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice V. Ramasubramanian, was a firm no.

The fourteen-year silence

The final development plan for Latur was published on January 2, 2002. Under Section 126 of the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, the State had ten years from that date to publish a declaration of intention to acquire the reserved land. That deadline passed in January 2012. No declaration was made.

Section 127 of the Act gave the landowners a second chance. They could serve a purchase notice on the authorities, requiring them to acquire the land within twelve months or face the reservation lapsing. The landowners served that notice on August 16, 2016. The Latur Municipal Corporation acknowledged receipt. And then did nothing.

By August 2017, the additional one-year period under Section 127 had also expired. The reservation should have lapsed automatically. The landowners should have been free to use their land. But the authorities still didn't act.

The High Court's compromise — and its flaw

The landowners moved the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Bench at Aurangabad, in 2021. On August 6, 2021, the High Court agreed that the reservation had lapsed. But then it did something unexpected. Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai & Ors. v. Hiraman Sitaram Deorukhar & Ors. (2019) 14 SCC 411, the High Court granted the municipal corporation one more year to acquire the land.

The logic seemed reasonable: the land was reserved for a playground, a public amenity. The State should have one last chance to acquire it before the owners could develop it. But the landowners saw it differently. They had already waited fourteen years plus the notice period. The statute gave no room for extra time. They appealed to the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court saw

Justice Hemant Gupta, writing for the Bench, examined the timeline closely. The ten-year period under Section 126 had expired in 2012. The one-year period under Section 127 had expired in 2017. By the time the High Court passed its order in 2021, the reservation had been dead for four years.

The Court then turned to the precedent the High Court had relied on. In Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai v. Hiraman Sitaram Deorukhar, the Supreme Court had directed the authorities to acquire land within six months under Article 142 of the Constitution. That direction was based on the specific facts of that case — a public park that the corporation had a duty to protect as a cestui que trust.

But the Supreme Court made a crucial distinction. Directions under Article 142, it held, are not law declared under Article 141 of the Constitution. They are not binding precedents. Subordinate courts cannot rely on them to grant additional time for acquisition. The High Court had erred in treating an Article 142 direction as a general rule.

THE PLAY: When a statute fixes a timeline for acquisition, courts cannot extend it — not even by one day — by relying on an Article 142 direction from another case. That direction binds only the parties in that case.

The doctrine that mattered: timelines are sacrosanct

The core of the judgment is simple but powerful. The Supreme Court held that the statutory timeline of ten years under Section 126, plus the additional one-year purchase notice period under Section 127, is sacrosanct. The State and its authorities must adhere to it. Courts cannot grant additional periods for acquisition beyond what the statute contemplates.

The Court also addressed a deeper principle: courts cannot direct the State to exercise its power of eminent domain. Acquisition depends on the State's own satisfaction that the land is required for a public purpose. If the State was inactive for a long period, courts would not issue a direction for acquisition. That would be forcing the State to take land, which is a sovereign function, not a judicial remedy.

Justice Gupta observed: "Once an embargo has been put on a land owner not to use the land in a particular manner, the said restriction cannot be kept open-ended for indefinite period." That line, though technically obiter, carries weight. It signals that indefinite reservations without acquisition violate the landowner's right to use their property.

Why this matters for practitioners

For advocates handling town planning disputes, this judgment is a clean, sharp tool. It does two things.

First, it shuts down the argument that courts can give the State "one more chance" to acquire land after the statutory period has expired. The High Court's approach — declaring the reservation lapsed but granting extra time — is now clearly wrong. The only correct order is to declare the reservation lapsed and let the landowner use the land.

Second, it clarifies the limited precedential value of Article 142 directions. Many High Courts have relied on Hiraman Sitaram Deorukhar to grant extensions. This judgment tells them to stop. Article 142 orders are case-specific. They don't create law under Article 141.

For CFOs and founders who hold land that is reserved in a development plan, the message is equally clear. The clock starts ticking from the date the development plan is published. If the State doesn't acquire within ten years, serve a purchase notice under Section 127. If the State still doesn't act within one year, the reservation lapses. You don't need to wait for a court to tell you that. The statute says so.

The bottom line

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court's direction granting one additional year for acquisition, and declared the reservation lapsed. The landowners in Latur can now use their land as they wish — no longer held hostage by a reservation the State never acted on.

For every landowner with a reserved plot, the rule is simple: count ten years from the development plan, serve a purchase notice, wait one year, and if nothing happens, the reservation is dead. No court can bring it back to life.