---
type: faq
question: >-
  What does Eminent Domain mean in relation to property rights? What is its
  current legal status in India?
topic: property
topic_title: Property Rights
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# What does Eminent Domain mean in relation to property rights? What is its current legal status in India?

Eminent domain, from a Latin term meaning "supreme ownership," rests on the old idea that a king or a government held true ownership over all land within its dominion. The term describes a state's power to acquire or expropriate private property for a valid public purpose, after paying the property's owner just compensation. A state exercising this power might, for instance, take over private land to build a road or a dam. This power ranks among the most controversial restrictions placed on the absolute right to property, and governments around the world hold and exercise it regardless.

The British first introduced eminent domain to India through the Bengal Regulation I of 1824, which authorised the state to compulsorily acquire private property in the Bengal Presidency. Similar laws followed for the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, and separate amendments later brought the railways under these same laws. Act VI of 1857 became the first consolidated land acquisition law for British India, repealing everything that came before it. The Land Acquisition Act of 1894, which applied only to British India, empowered the state to acquire private land for a "public purpose" on payment of compensation, and other Indian states passed their own versions of the law, including the Hyderabad Land Acquisition Act of 1899, the Mysore Land Acquisition Act of 1894, and the Travancore Land Acquisition Act of 1914.

Constitutional protection for the right to property first appeared in the Government of India Act, 1935, which made it illegal for the state to expropriate private property, including land and commercial or industrial undertakings, without a public purpose and full compensation. Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 of the Indian Constitution later enshrined the right to property as a fundamental right, until the 44th Constitutional Amendment removed both provisions in 1978. Eminent domain now operates under Article 300A instead, as a constitutional right rather than a fundamental one.

After independence, the government kept using the 1894 Act, which set out the procedure for land acquisition and compensation, including acquisitions made on behalf of private companies to encourage industrialisation. Various state governments amended the Act further to suit their own conditions. Several other colonial-era laws carried land acquisition provisions too, including the Telegraphs Act of 1885, the Railways Act of 1890 (replaced in 1989), the Electricity Act of 1910 (replaced in 2003), and the Forest Act of 1927, and post-independence laws such as the Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) Act of 1957 and the Special Economic Zones Act of 2005 carried similar provisions.

Two questions dominated land acquisition debates after independence: what counted as a legitimate "public purpose," and what compensation the state owed affected landowners and other stakeholders. Once the Constitution stripped the right to property of its fundamental-right status, and the Ninth Schedule shielded land laws from judicial scrutiny, landowners lost the ability to challenge either question under Article 32 as a violation of a fundamental right.

Abuse of eminent domain rose in step with the fundamental right to property's decline, driven mainly through the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. Public anger grew over forcible land acquisitions carried out often without consent, and over compensation that arrived too small and too late. Parliament, wary of political retribution from the victims of brazen land grabs, eventually passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The new Act required 80% of affected families to consent before the state could acquire land for a private project, and 70% consent for a public-private partnership project. It set compensation at four times the market rate in rural areas and twice the market rate in urban areas, and it added rehabilitation, resettlement, and further entitlements on top. Parliament repealed the 1894 Act in the same stroke.