Valuation of Buildings, Trees, Crops and Other Attached Assets: Section 29

The Act acquires land in its legal sense, the earth and everything attached to it, and Section 29 makes sure the attachments are valued by people who know what they are looking at: engineers for structures, forestry and horticulture specialists for trees and plants, agronomists for standing crops. The values found here are added to the multiplied market value under Section 27 and then doubled by the solatium. This note covers the three valuation mandates and the principles that govern them.

1. The Three Mandates

• Buildings and structures: the Collector determines the value of things attached to the land or buildings with the help of a competent engineer or any other specialist in the relevant field, as the appropriate Government may notify, the farmhouse, the tubewell housing, the cattle shed and the factory shed priced by someone qualified to price construction.
• Trees and plants: value is determined with the help of experienced persons in the field of agriculture, forestry, horticulture, sericulture or any other field, as may be considered necessary, the mango orchard and the mulberry plantation priced as the income-bearing assets they are, not as timber.
• Standing crops damaged: the value of standing crops damaged during the acquisition process is assessed with the help of experienced persons in the field of agriculture, the harvest the process cost, counted even before possession formally passes.

2. The Governing Principles

Three principles organise the section's practice. Everything attached is in: the Act's definition of land includes benefits arising out of land and things attached to the earth or permanently fastened to it, so the Section 20 plan should inventory, and Section 29 should price, each building, well, borewell, pipeline, fence, tree and crop; an asset missing from the plan is the commonest route to silent under-compensation, and the Section 21 objection the cure. Specialist valuation is the rule, not a favour: the section's language sends the Collector to competence, and an award pricing an orchard on a revenue clerk's guess sits poorly with the mandate; on reference, specialist methods, income capitalisation for fruit trees, scheduled rates for structures, prevail over impressions. The values join the doubled base: Section 27 adds the asset values to the multiplied market value, and Section 30's solatium runs on the whole, so the statutory sequence is multiply the land, add the assets, then double.

3. Working Points

• Trees: timber value or fruit value: the settled valuation approach prices a fruit-bearing tree by capitalising its net annual yield over its remaining bearing life, and a timber tree by its timber; claimants lose crores collectively by accepting timber rates for orchards, and the specialist mandate exists precisely against that.
• Structures: replacement less depreciation: the working method for buildings is the engineer's estimate of reproduction cost less depreciation, on scheduled rates current at the valuation date; owner-built improvements, bore-wells and levelling are compensable works, not gratuitous features.
• No double counting: land priced as orchard land cannot have the same orchard's capitalised income added again in full; valuation keeps the land value and the asset value consistent, the point the Authority polices on reference.
• Crops and the interim: crop damage during survey is paid under Section 13 at entry; crops taken or damaged in the acquisition are valued under this section; and profits lost between declaration and possession travel under Section 28's sixth head, three provisions, three intervals, no gap.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• Section 27 (Topic 38): where the asset values are added
• Marking and planning (Topic 30): the inventory the valuation depends on
• Section 28 heads (Topic 39): crop damage's neighbouring remedies
• Solatium (Topic 41): the doubling that follows