Supreme Court junks Infosys plea even as company cites Kannada translation for delay in filing appeal

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea by Infosys Limited challenging the enhanced compensation awarded to the family of a landowner whose land in Mysuru was acquired for the company’s campus expansion. [Infosys Limited v. B Raju]

A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan refused to condone the delay of over 160 days in filing the appeal. Infosys had explained the delay by stating that it took time to translate documents from Kannada to English.

“Infosys saying it took time for them to translate documents from Kannada to English? Dismissed,” Justice Datta remarked while rejecting the application at the outset.

Senior Advocate Atmaram Nadkarni, who appeared for Infosys, urged the Bench not to dismiss the plea on limitation and undertook to file a fresh affidavit in support of the condonation application. The Bench, however, refused to consider this request.

The dispute dates back to 2005, when 1.05 acres of land in Mysuru was acquired by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) as part of a larger 18.04-acre acquisition for the expansion of Infosys’ Mysuru campus.

The special land acquisition officer had originally fixed the compensation at ₹4.85 lakh per acre. Dissatisfied, the landowner’s family sought a reference under Section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

In January 2020, the Mysuru reference court enhanced the compensation substantially, fixing it at ₹220 per sq ft, along with statutory benefits such as solatium and interest.

Infosys challenged the award before the Karnataka High Court. The company argued that the reference court had wrongly relied on auction sale deeds and small-plot transactions, which could not be treated as comparable for valuing large agricultural tracts.

It also contended that there was no reliable evidence of the land having non-agricultural potential at the time of the preliminary notification. Photographs and satellite images could not justify such enhancement, it was contended.

The landowners, however, argued that the acquired land was contiguous to the Infosys campus and located in a rapidly industrialising belt with multiple software and manufacturing companies. They pointed to sale deeds of residential plots executed in 2005 showing values between ₹430 and ₹499 per sq ft, and stressed that the reference court had fixed a lower rate of ₹220 only because they could not afford to pay court fees for a cross-objection seeking further enhancement.

On October 22, 2024, a Division Bench of Justices Sreenivas Harish Kumar and Umesh M Adiga dismissed Infosys’ appeal. The High Court held that even after applying deductions, the available sale exemplars justified a value higher than ₹220 per sq ft and noted that the land clearly had industrial potential given its location adjacent to Infosys’ existing operations.

By the time Infosys moved the Supreme Court, the delay in filing had crossed 160 days.