Right of Property after Forty-fourth Amendment - Better Protected than Ever Before
By
Professor P. K. Tripathi
The Forty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution has repealed Article 19 (1) (f) which guaranteed to every citizen the "right to acquire, hold and dispose of property" subject to "reasonable restrictions"; and it has also repealed the entire Article 31. The provision of cl. (1) of Art. 31, however, has been re-enacted as Article 300A precisely in the same words. The only right lost by the repeal of Article 31, therefore, is the right contained in clause (2) of that article. This clause said that the State shall not acquire private property compulsorily "save for a public purpose and save by authority of a law which provides for acquisition or requisitioning of the property for an amount which may be fixed by law......" In other words, this clause imposed on the power of the State to acquire private property compulsorily the two well-known conditions: the existence of public purpose and giving of a quid pro quo for the property acquired.
On the sur ....