Doctrine of Impossibility

Supreme Court in the case of Indore Development Authority Vs. Shailendra (through legal representative) & Ors. reported in (2018) 3 SCC 412.
155. In several cases it is often seen that the landowners are not ready to accept the compensation even though they have been offered the same; they have either refused to accept or have filed writ applications questioning the land acquisitions. Further, it is also observed, that repeatedly, successive writ applications have also been filed by the
persons who have purchased the property after issuance of notification under Section 4 and, in some instances, even after passing of the award, possession taken and when the land has absolutely vested in the State Government, that such persons are calling into question the land acquisition. We have come across several cases when the challenges to acquisition have been negatived right up to this Court but, undeterred by the
same, fresh round of litigation is, thereafter, started again, with the cause again being agitated either by the same persons or by some other such purchasers. It has come to our
notice that now, after the coming into force of the The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013, unsavoury attempts are being made to grossly misuse the process of law by moving such petitions, and asserting therein that though they themselves might not have accepted the compensation, and have refused to accept the same, but, since it has “not been paid to them”, by making deposit in court, or they have remained in the actual possession of the land, though panchnama of taking possession might have
been drawn, as such, land acquisition has lapsed. The aforementioned assertions are being made; notwithstanding even earlier judicial finding that possession had been taken by drawing panchnama, etc. If Section 24 is interpreted in the method and manner so as to reopen all the cases, notwithstanding the fact that the landowners, or as the case may be their successors-in-interest are themselves responsible for not accepting or illegally refusing to accept the compensation, or that they have, in an illegal manner, re- entered into possession of land, then it becomes, and it has, in fact, become, virtually impossible for the State Governments to save and carry into effect the much-needed acquisition of the land, at the cost of public interest, leaving it with no viable legal defence with which to save the acquisition in such proceedings made decades before.