Mosquito repellents used by policemen on night patrol along the expressway. (Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya) New Delhi, Aug. 25: If the Bengal government wants to return some of the Singur land to the original owners, it can bypass the legal difficulties by enacting a law in the Assembly, legal experts say. One reason the state has cited to reject Mamata Banerjee's demand to hand back 400 acres to unwilling landlosers is that the law doesn't allow return of acquired land. But Supreme Court lawyer K.V. Vishwanath said Bengal could solve the problem by enacting "a provision like Section 48B in the Tamil Nadu land acquisition act, which permits return of land to the original owners'. Fellow apex court lawyer A.K. Ganguli endorsed that view. Land acquisition falls in the concurrent list. Since Bengal's land acquisition act had lapsed in 1993, the state acquired the Singur plots under the central law. Under Section 48 of the (central) Land Acquisition Act, 1894, a state can return acquired land to the original owner only if it hasn't yet taken possession of the plot. The collector works out and pays a compensation to the owner for the damage suffered over the acquisition proceedings. But once possession has been taken, as in Singur, the state cannot return the land because the law has no clause allowing de-notification (revocation) of acquisition. Besides, the Supreme Court had virtually banned any such de-notification in the 1997 Kerala versus Bhaskaran Pillai case. It said that if any land proves surplus after being acquired for a public purpose, such land