Payment of Compensation, Deposit and Investment: Sections 77 to 80

The award is a promise; Sections 77 to 80 are its performance: tender and payment on making the award, deposit with the Authority where payment is blocked, protective investment where the recipient's title is limited or his capacity incomplete, and interest the moment the State holds both the land and the money. This note covers the payment machinery and its protective logic.

1. Tender and Payment: Section 77

• The duty: on making the award, the Collector tenders payment of the compensation to the persons entitled according to the award, and pays it to them unless prevented by one of the statutory contingencies.
• The contingencies: payment is prevented, and deposit follows, where the entitled persons do not consent to receive it, where there is no person competent to alienate the land, or where there is a dispute as to the title to receive or as to apportionment.
• Protest preserved: a person admitted to be interested may receive payment under protest as to the sufficiency of the amount, and the Act's rule is strict in both directions: receipt without protest bars the Section 64 reference on quantum, while protest keeps every door open, the single most practical line in the chapter.
• The deposit: where payment is prevented, the Collector deposits the compensation with the Authority, and the deposit discharges the State's payment duty for interest purposes while the entitlement contest proceeds, the fund in neutral custody, not in the treasury's enjoyment.

2. Protective Investment: Sections 78 and 79

• Land held under disabled titles (Section 78): where the land belonged to a person with no power to alienate it, the holder of a limited estate, the trustee, the minor's estate, the Authority orders the deposited money invested in the purchase of other lands to be held under the like title, or, until such purchase, in Government or approved securities, the corpus preserved for everyone the old title protected, with the income going where the land's income went.
• Other deposited funds (Section 79): money deposited for other reasons may likewise be invested or applied under the Authority's direction in the interested persons' favour, applied in discharge of encumbrances, invested pending resolution, paid out as entitlements are established.
• The logic: acquisition must not work a succession: the widow's estate, the minor's inheritance and the trust corpus are not converted into someone's spendable cash merely because the State needed the land; the money wears the title the land wore.

3. The Backstop: Section 80

Section 80 closes the chapter with the delay price covered fully in Topic 43: compensation not paid or deposited on or before taking possession carries interest at 9% per annum from possession, rising to 15% on amounts outstanding beyond one year, on the award's full, solatium-inclusive amount. Read as one machine, the chapter's sequence is: award → tender → payment (or deposit on the three contingencies) → protective investment where titles are limited → interest the moment the sequence breaks. For the practitioner the checklist writes itself: record the protest at receipt; where payment is refused or disputed, confirm the deposit actually reached the Authority (a book entry in the treasury is not a deposit); for limited and disabled titles, seek the investment order rather than consenting to a payout that succession law would never have allowed; and compute interest from the possession date whenever the money moved later than the land.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Interest in full (Topic 43): Section 80's own note
• Apportionment (Topic 77): the dispute that triggers deposit
• Possession (Topic 61): the date the clock watches
• Finality and protest (Topic 35): why the receipt's wording matters