Abstract:
Public Trust Doctrine [PTD] intends to preserve certain natural and cultural resources
for public use by the government and thus any use or sale of such land must be
in the public interest. PTD used to be an effective tool of general application for
citizens to obtain a judicial intervention to protect their rights, in its post-war
situation in Sri Lanka; there are high degrees of statics shows that the private
lands have been acquired by the government for the purpose of development
without paying reasonable compensation. Hence, this paper intends to analyze to
what extent the government can acquire the private land for such development
by paying a reasonable compensation and the PTD aids the people to question
the government for the acquisition. This paper is based on socio – legal study. It
is a qualitative mode of approach; the data for this research was collected from
Acts and International Conventions as a primary source and judicial decisions,
text books, journals and scholarly articles available at both library and electronic
data bases as a secondary source. This paper mainly focuses on the issues between
freedom of the development of the country and Land rights of the people. Freedom
of enjoyment of private property is the primary goal of the development, in
practical situation human rights are violated in the name of the development. Even
several years were lapsed from the end of civil war their issues are not addressed
by the relevant authorities. This study aims to fill the space by proposing certain
recommendations to settle the issues on Property Rights of the person and try to
find to what extent the government can acquire the private land for the, economics
of the country, Property Rights of individual, and strengthen the good governance
with the sustainable development in Sri Lanka.
