Matters to Be Neglected in Determining Compensation

Valuation is as much about what the Collector must ignore as what he must count. The 1894 Act carried a famous checklist, Section 24's eight matters to be neglected, and the 2013 Act carries the doctrine forward through the discounting rules built into Section 26 and the valuation principles the courts settled over a century. This note assembles the excluded matters: the classical catalogue, the new Act's own textual hooks, and the logic that joins them.

1. The 2013 Act's Own Exclusions

• Non-indicative prices discounted: in computing the comparable-sales benchmark, any price which in the Collector's opinion is not indicative of the actual prevailing market value may be discounted, the distress sale, the intra-family transfer at a token sum, the deed engineered for the occasion.
• The frozen valuation date: market value is fixed as on the preliminary notification's date (Section 26), so appreciation or depreciation after that date, including the project's own effect on neighbouring prices, is outside the award by construction.
• Post-notification dealings: the Section 11(4) freeze makes transactions in the notified land after notification void of effect against the acquisition, and prices from such dealings earn no place in the comparables.
• Post-notification improvements: value added to the land after the notification, construction raised to inflate the award being the classic case, is not compensated, the corollary of the frozen date and the freeze, and the settled rule under the old Act.

2. The Classical Catalogue

Section 24 of the 1894 Act enumerated the matters the court was to neglect, and the catalogue survives as valuation doctrine because each entry states a principle rather than a technicality:

• the degree of urgency which led to the acquisition, the State's hurry neither raises nor lowers the price;
• any disinclination of the person interested to part with the land, attachment is real but not compensable as value (the solatium is the statute's answer to compulsion);
• damage sustained which, if caused by a private person, would not be actionable, no compensation for lawful competition or lawful overlooking;
• damage likely to be caused to the land after the declaration, by or in consequence of the intended use, future-use damage to the acquired land itself is not a separate head;
• any increase in value likely to accrue from the use to which the acquired land will be put, the owner does not capture the project's own uplift on his parcel: value is taken at the land's worth to the seller, not its special worth to this buyer;
• any increase in value by reason of use in a manner forbidden by law or contrary to public policy, unlawful use earns nothing; and
• outlay or improvements made without the Collector's sanction after the notification, the award-inflation entry, now reinforced by the 2013 freeze.

3. The Logic That Joins Them

The exclusions enforce one idea from two directions: compensation restores the owner's position as it stood at the valuation date, in a lawful market, unaffected by the acquisition itself. The State may not depress the price (urgency, its own project's blight before notification is answered by the 12% amount and, where it bites, the Section 28 heads), and the owner may not inflate it (manufactured deeds, post-notification construction, the project's uplift, unlawful use). Between the two, the award prices the land, not the litigation. For the 2013 practitioner the catalogue operates through three doors: the Section 26 discounting power for manufactured and non-indicative prices; the frozen date and the Section 11(4) freeze for everything post-notification; and the inherited valuation doctrine, which the Authority and the courts apply on reference exactly as they did under the old Act, the new statute having changed the arithmetic of compensation without changing the hygiene of valuation.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Market value (Topic 36): the benchmarks the exclusions clean
• The Section 28 heads (Topic 39): what, by contrast, must be counted
• The transaction freeze (Topic 25): the structural exclusion
• Reference to the Authority (Topic 73): where valuation hygiene is enforced