No Change of Purpose, No Change of Ownership: Sections 99 and 100

Eminent domain's legitimacy is purpose-shaped: the State took this land for that project, and every later use of the land trades on that original justification. Sections 99 and 100 hold the acquisition to its word: no change from the acquired purpose, save a narrow proviso, and no transfer of the land except for a public purpose, with prior approval. This note covers the two bars, their proviso and gate, and the doctrine beneath them.

1. No Change of Purpose: Section 99

• The bar: no change from the purpose or related purposes for which the land was originally sought to be acquired shall be allowed, the declaration's stated purpose travels with the land as a restriction on the State itself.
• The proviso: where the acquired land is rendered unusable for its original purpose due to a fundamental change because of unforeseen circumstances, the appropriate Government may use it for any other public purpose, the escape is narrow on its face: not convenience, not a better idea later, but supervening impossibility, and the substitute use must itself be public.
• The discipline's reach: the bar binds the Requiring Body as much as the Government: land acquired for the hospital cannot quietly become the mall's parking, and a diversion is challengeable by the expropriated, whose sacrifice was purpose-specific.

2. No Change of Ownership: Section 100

• The bar: no land acquired under the Act shall be transferred to any other entity, except for a public purpose, and with the prior approval of the appropriate Government, two conditions, cumulative: a public purpose destination and a considered, prior, governmental sanction.
• What it prevents: the laundering of acquisitions, land taken by a public authority and passed to private hands that could never have satisfied the Act's own gates (consent, SIA, the Section 2(1) exclusions); transfer cannot do what acquisition could not.
• The toll beyond the gate: where a permitted transfer happens without development, Section 102 takes its 40% share of the appreciation for the original owners (Topic 65), approval lets the land move, it does not let the gain escape.

3. The Doctrine Beneath

The two sections codify what the public-purpose condition always implied. The classical cases treated a colourable purpose as vitiating the taking at its inception; Sections 99 and 100 extend the logic forward in time: a purpose abandoned after vesting retrospectively falsifies the justification on which the citizen was compelled, so the Act polices the purpose's afterlife rather than only its birth. Read with their neighbours the design is complete: Section 99 (the purpose fixed), Section 100 (the owner fixed), Section 101 (use it in five years or return it), Section 102 (flip it and share the gain), four provisions that together convert the acquired parcel from the State's windfall into a trust-like holding, usable only for the declared public end. Practically, the two bars generate the diligence questions every post-acquisition transaction must answer: what purpose does the declaration state; is the proposed use that purpose or a Section 99 proviso case genuinely made out; if a transfer is proposed, where is the prior approval, what is the public purpose of the transferee's use, and has Section 102's sharing been provided for. An answer missing at any step is a defect the original owners can litigate, and increasingly do.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Return of unutilised land (Topic 64): the time discipline
• Appreciation sharing (Topic 65): the profit discipline
• Public purpose (Topic 11): the justification these sections preserve
• The Singur judgment (Topic 119): purpose failure litigated