The Supreme Court of India, in a judgment delivered on 21 September 2026, held that the limitation period for seeking enhanced compensation under Section 28A of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 runs from a Reference Court's own award, not from an appellate order that merely follows an earlier appellate decision without independently granting any enhancement. A Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, in New Okhla Industrial Development Authority & Anr. v. Rajveer Singh & Ors., allowed NOIDA's appeal and rejected a compensation claim as time-barred.
Background
The respondents' predecessors-in-interest held land acquired under a notification issued in 1977, for which they received the Collector's award and compensation without seeking a reference under Section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. Other landowners covered by the same notification did seek a reference, but it was rejected by the Additional District Judge, Ghaziabad in 1981. An appeal from that rejection, First Appeal No. 458 of 1982, was disposed of only on 18 April 2022 — by an order that simply followed the outcome of a separate, earlier First Appeal No. 593 of 1982, decided in January 2019, concerning the same village and notification.
Within three months of the 2022 order, the respondents filed an application under Section 28A seeking enhanced compensation on the basis of that appellate order. The Collector rejected the application as not maintainable, since it was not based on a Reference Court award under Section 18. The Allahabad High Court, relying on the three-Judge Bench decision in Union of India v. Pradeep Kumari, (1995) 2 SCC 736 and a more recent 2024 Division Bench decision in Banwari & Ors. v. Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd., allowed the application. NOIDA appealed to the Supreme Court.
Key Holdings
1. Section 28A can ordinarily be invoked only from a Reference Court award under Section 26. Surveying a line of decisions spanning three-Judge Bench rulings in Pradeep Kumari and Jose Antonio Cruz Dos R. Rodriguese v. Land Acquisition Collector, (1996) 6 SCC 746, and the Constitution Bench in Union of India v. Hansoli Devi, (2002) 7 SCC 273, the Court reaffirmed that the "award" referred to in Section 28A means an award made by the court on a reference under Section 18 — not an appellate order under Section 54.
2. The Banwari exception is narrow and applies only where the reference produced no enhancement at all. The Court explained that Banwari carved out a limited exception: where a reference under Section 18 is rejected outright, with no enhancement whatsoever, and a First Appeal subsequently grants the first-ever enhancement, a landowner who never sought a reference may invoke Section 28A within three months of that appellate order. This addresses a genuine casus omissus, since Section 28A's third sub-section presupposes an enhancement traceable back to a Reference Court award, which simply does not exist where the reference itself failed entirely.
3. On the facts, the 2022 order did not independently create any enhancement. The Court found that the 2022 appellate order (Annexure P1) "merely relied on" the 2019 order in the separate appeal without granting any fresh enhancement of its own, and that the respondents' land fell in the same village covered by both appeals. Applying the settled rule that limitation runs from the date of the award and not the date of knowledge, the Court held that limitation had actually commenced on 8 July 2019 — the date of the first genuine enhancement — and expired three months later, on 7 October 2019, long before the 2022 application was filed.
4. Successive appellate orders do not generate fresh limitation periods. The Court rejected the argument that each successive appellate order in a chain of related cases restarts the Section 28A clock, holding that "there is no question of successive orders in First Appeal, conferring fresh cause of action under Section 28A," since a High Court in a later First Appeal is bound by its own earlier coordinate decision on the same acquisition and village.
5. Only one Section 28A application is permitted, and Babua Ram and Andanayya were addressed. The Court reaffirmed that Babua Ram v. State of U.P., (1995) 2 SCC 689, stood overruled by Pradeep Kumari to the extent it restricted Section 28A to the first award after a reference, but held that the single-application rule articulated in Pradeep Kumari itself remains binding. It expressly doubted the correctness of a 2026 two-Judge Bench decision, Andanayya & Ors. v. Deputy Chief Engineer, which had permitted a second Section 28A application using the doctrine of merger, finding it inconsistent with binding three-Judge Bench precedent, though it declined to formally refer the point since it did not arise on the facts before it.
Implications for Practitioners
This judgment gives land acquisition practitioners a clear diagnostic for Section 28A claims founded on appellate rather than Reference Court orders: examine whether the appellate order genuinely grants a fresh enhancement in its own right, or whether it merely disposes of a connected appeal by following an earlier decision on the same acquisition notification. Only the former can restart the three-month limitation clock under the narrow Banwari exception; the latter cannot, however procedurally significant the order may appear.
For authorities and government bodies acquiring land, the ruling limits exposure to compensation claims arising many years after acquisition through chains of related appellate proceedings, reinforcing that the beneficial character of Section 28A does not dispense with strict compliance with its limitation requirements. Practitioners representing landowners who did not seek a Section 18 reference should identify, at the earliest possible stage, the precise Reference Court or appellate order that first enhanced compensation for their notification, since that — and only that — order fixes the limitation clock.
The Court's doubt over Andanayya also signals that practitioners relying on a "second application by merger" theory should expect resistance in future litigation, pending any formal reference of that question to a larger Bench.