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17. The Act is an Act to amend the law for the acquisition of land for public purpose and for companies and the Act is a pre-constitutional law. Article 300A of the Constitution of India dealing with persons not to be deprived of property save by authority of law has been inserted by the Constitution (44th Amendment) Act, 1978, which specifies that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.

18. The scope and ambit of Article 300A of the Constitution of India had been dealt with by the Apex Court in Ms/. Bishamber Dayal Chandra Mohan v. State Of Uttar Pradesh and Tinsukhia Electric Supply Co. Ltd. v. State of Assam and Ors. . The Full Bench of Kerala High Court in Elizebath Samuel Aaron v. state observed at paragraphs 21 to 24 as follows:

For the reasons aforesaid, we are unable to agree with the view of the High Court of Bombay in Basantibai Fakirchand Khetan v. State of Maharashtra , that despite the deletion of Article 31, the obligation to pay adequate amount to the owner of the property still survives. Apart from what we have stated earlier for taking a contrary view, we are also not able to discern any reason stated in the decision why the obligation to pay an adequate amount should be read into provisions of Article 300A, or why the purpose of deletion of Article 31(2) which contained specific provisions for payment of amount should be ignored. Absolutely no reasons are suggested for engrafting a deleted non-existent provision into Article 300A. If the intent of Parliament was that Article 31(2), either in its original or amended form, should find reflection even in the constitutional right introduced by the 44th Amendment, nothing prevented them from incorporating the same in Article 300A. On the other hand, what Parliament chose to do was only to transform Article 31(1) as Article 300A, and omit Article 31(2) in its entirety from the Constitution. It is not for this Court to overlook the long constitutional history of amendments, and resuscitate the excised Clause (2) of Article 31 by implication when Parliament has itself chosen to give the go-by to the right, either as a fundamental right, or as a constitutional right.

We may also note that the Supreme Court has in Tinsukhia Electric Supply Co. Ltd. V. State of Assam , observed that even though Article 31 had not been deleted (at the time of the 42nd Amendment) (at p.138). 'Its content had been cut down so much, so that even under a law providing for acquisition of property which did not have the protection of 31-C the adequacy of the "Amount" determined was not justiciable and all that was necessary was that it should not be unreal or illusory. By then the Constitution had done away with the idea of a just equivalent or full indemnification principle and substituted therefore the idea of an 'Amount' and rendered the question of the adequacy or the inadequacy of the amount non-justiciable'. Even the attenuated operation of Article 31(2) referred to above was done away with by the 44th Amendment by deleting it altogether from the Constitution".