Tamil Nadu's Section 105A and the Validation of State Acquisition Laws

Tamil Nadu ran the boldest State experiment: not trimming the 2013 Act but exempting its own three acquisition statutes from it altogether, through a State-inserted Section 105A, and, when the courts struck the attempt down, reviving the statutes retrospectively by a validation Act that the Supreme Court upheld in 2021. The saga is the subject's best lesson in repugnancy, revival and validation. This note tells it in order.

1. The Device: Section 105A

• The three statutes: the Tamil Nadu Acquisition of Land for Harijan Welfare Schemes Act, 1978, the Tamil Nadu Acquisition of Land for Industrial Purposes Act, 1997, and the Tamil Nadu Highways Act, 2001, the State's own high-volume acquisition machinery, each with procedures leaner than the 2013 Act's.
• The amendment: the Tamil Nadu amendment of 2014, receiving Presidential assent on 1 January 2015, inserted Section 105A into the central Act as it applies to Tamil Nadu: the Act shall not apply to the three State enactments, a State-made mirror of Section 105's Fourth Schedule, with the Act's compensation standards extended to them in the amendment's own way.
• The problem beneath: the three State Acts, being repugnant to the 2013 Act in the concurrent field, had arguably become void on 1 January 2014 under Article 254(1); the 2015 device assumed they were alive to be exempted, and that assumption became the litigation.

2. The Fall and the Revival

• The Madras High Court (2019): held that the three State Acts stood eclipsed and inoperative from the 2013 Act's commencement: being repugnant, they died with it, and Section 105A, inserted only in 2015, could not retrospectively revive statutes already void, acquisitions made under them in the interval fell, with the State's acquisition programme in chaos.
• The Revival Act: the Tamil Nadu Land Acquisition Laws (Revival of Operation, Amendment and Validation) Act, 2019, reserved for and receiving Presidential assent, re-enacted and revived the three Acts retrospectively from 26 September 2013, validated the acquisitions made under them, and aligned their compensation with the 2013 standards, the classical validation technique: re-enact with the assent that cures the repugnancy, retrospectively, removing the basis of the judgment rather than overruling it.

3. The Supreme Court's Verdict

4. What the Saga Teaches

• Repugnancy kills silently: the three Acts needed no one to strike them down in 2014; Article 254(1) voided their repugnant operation by force of the Constitution, the point the 2015 device missed and the High Court enforced.
• Exemption cannot resurrect: a State amendment can carve living law out of a central Act's path; it cannot breathe on statutes already dead, revival needs re-enactment with assent, which is exactly what the 2019 Act did.
• Validation's one honest form: legislatures may change the law retrospectively and validate past acts under the changed law; they may not simply reverse a judgment; G. Mohan Rao applies the settled line to acquisition's biggest modern example.
• The result on the ground: Tamil Nadu acquires highways, industrial and welfare-scheme land under its own three statutes, outside the 2013 Act's procedures but at its compensation standards, the most complete State divergence the Act has produced.

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• State amendments generally (Topic 96): the wave this device led
• Article 254 mechanics (Topic 8): repugnancy and assent
• Section 105's Fourth Schedule (Topic 87): the central model 105A mirrored
• Landmark judgments (Topic 116): G. Mohan Rao in the canon