Chamel Singh vs State of Haryana and others

I.S. Tiwana, J. (Oral)

The petitioners, who belong to villages Gobindpura, Garhi Mundo and Jagadhri, impugn the notifications under sections 4 and 6 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (for short, the Act), dated August 20, 1980 and July 13, 1982, respectively, issued by the State Government for the acquisition of 823.17 acres of land including that of the petitioners on the following three grounds :

(i) The real purpose behind the issuance of these notifications is to peg down the prices of the petitioners'' land as actually the State authorities have no need to acquire this land and thus the issuance of these notifications is the result of colourable exercise of power.

(ii) There has been no compliance of the provisions of section 4 of the Act inasmuch as the substance of the first notification was not published in the locality concerned.

(iii) The action of the authorities in not acquiring the land of respondents 3 to 5 which falls somewhere in the centre of the acquired land, is discriminatory and thus these notifications deserve to be quashed. The respondent authorities have, however, refuted these three allegations in their reply which has been filed on their behalf by Shri Vijay Kumar, H.C.S., Land Acquisition Collector. Having heard the learned counsel for the parties I find no merit in this petition.

To sustain his first contention, the learned counsel for the petitioners highlights that the respondent authorities had earlier issued two similar notifications under section 4 of the Act on November 28, 1969 and June 1, 1974 (Annexures P.2 and P.4 respectively), but allowed those notifications to lapse by efflux of time. It is also maintained by him that the real purpose of issuing the presently impugned notification Annexure P7, is to virtually keep the price of the acquired land pegged down to the rate prevalent in the year 1969. If the authorities are allowed to acquire this land then what is going to be paid to the petitioners by way of compensation would be equivalent to the price of this land in the year 1969. The stand of the respondent authorities in this regard, however, is that the earlier two notifications were allowed to lapse as those suffered from technical defects inasmuch as the substance of those notifications had not been published in the localities concerned simultaneously or immediately after the publication of the same in the official gazette. It is also contended by their learned counsel that as a matter of fact the issuance of repeated notifications by the State Government shows the anxiety of the authorities is to acquire this land.

In order to accept the stand of the petitioners what deserves to be seen is as to whether the presently impugned notifications can be said to have been issued with an ulterior purpose of acquiring the land at some future date at a price which was prevalent earlier to the issuance of these notifications or are there any circumstances to indicate that the said authorities as a matter of fact did not need this land for the public purpose which has been notified as "developing and utilizing the area for residential, commercial and industrial purpose". As already pointed out, the two impugned notifications were issued on August 20, 1980 and July 7, 1982 and before the acquisition proceedings could be completed with the making of an award under section 11 of the Act, the present petition was filed on August 30, 1982. It is explained by the authorities that during the interval between the issuance of the two impugned notifications, they had to deal with and dispose of the objections filed under section 5A of the Act by hundreds of persons whose land was likely to be acquired. In view of the large number of objections filed by the landowners, the period of a little more than two years spent by the authorities cannot be held to be excessive or unjustified. After section 6 notification, the authorities, in order to complete the process of acquisition issued notices under section 9 of the Act to the landowners concerned and before anything could materialize in this regard this Court vide its order dated September 3, 1982 stayed the pronouncement of the award. It is an account of this order as per the stand of the authorities that they could not complete the acquisition till today. It is thus apparent from the above narration of facts that the authorities concerned cannot be accused of dilatory tactics in the completion of the acquisition proceedings carried on in pursuance of these notifications. In view of that merely that earlier notifications issued under section 4 were allowed to lapse twice cannot by itself make the presently impugned notifications infirm or defective. The delay on account of the lapsing of those two notifications could only be taken into consideration if the authorities could be held guilty of either delaying or nonseriousness in completing the acquisition proceedings in pursuance of these two notifications. In support of his stand, the learned counsel for the petitioners makes a reference to a Division Bench decision of this Court in Om Parkash v. State of Haryana and others, 1984 PLJ 1 : 1984 R.R.R. 195. In the given facts and circumstances of that case the impugned notification was held to be mala fide. Further, the learned Judges of the Bench were also not satisfied about the delay which the authorities concerned had caused in the issuance of section 6 notification subsequent to the section 4 notification. All this is so much clear from the following concluding observations made in that judgment :

"This delay in issuance of notification under section 6 of the Act, on the facts of this case, has become very material in view of the facts that notifications have been issued off and on since 1972. The entire delay for which, as earlier observed, there is no convincing explanation, leads to only one irresistible conclusion that notification so far as it relates to the land involved in the petition, suffers from the vice of mala fide."

No such situation exists in the instant case. Here the section 6 notification was issued by the authorities a little more than two years after the publication of the notification under section 4 of the Act and during this interRegulation m between the two notifications they had to deal with and dispose of the objections of hundreds of people filed under section 5A. Even after the issuance of section 6 notification, the authorities took no unreasonable time in issuing notices to the landowners under section 9 of the Act. Hardly about two months had passed after the publication of section 6 notification when the present petition was filed and the authorities were directed not to pronounce the award. In the light of these facts it looks difficult to draw any parity between the facts of the two cases, i.e., the instant case and the Om Parkash''s case (supra)

So far as the next argument of the learned counsel for the petitioners about the noncompliances of the provisions of section 4(1) of the Act is concerned, his total reliance is on the affidavit of Paras Ram Chowkidar who, as per the stand of the respondent authorities, had made publication in the locality where the presently acquired land is situated. In this affidavit, which is Annexure P.9 to the petition Paras Ram has stated that it was only on certain enquiries made by one Daya Ram Lambardar of village Gobindpura that he came to know for the first time that some land belonging to villages Gobindpura, Garhi Mundo and Jagadhri was going to be acquired and he "did not effect any publicity in this regard in the locality of villages Jagadhri, Garhi Mundo and Gobindpura in the year 1980". In the next paragraph of the affidavit he has stated that " I positively remember that the Patwar Halqa summoned me and got my thumb impression". In order to disprove this stand of the petitioners and also of Paras Ram Chowkidar, the respondent, authorities placed on record another affidavit of this very Chowkidar, i.e., Annexure R.2 wherein he stated that "I published the substance of notification u/s 4 of village Gobindpura and Garhi Mundo on 21.8.80 in the concerned locality by beat of empty tin and loud voice". Further in this affidavit he also averred that "I remember that I signed some blank papers handed over to me by the landowners of village Gobindpura and Garhi Mundo." In the face of these two affidavits of the same person i.e. Paras Ram, it is difficult to rely on his statement either way.Thus I discard his version. In the absence of that the categoric stand of the Land Acquisition Collector in his affidavit that due publicity of the substance of the notification under section 4 of the Act was made in the locality concerned, i.e., the three revenue estates of Gobindpura, Garhi Mundo and Jagadhri has to be accepted. I have no reasons to doubt the correctness of this affidavit. Further in the light of the latest pronouncement of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Deepak Pahwa etc. v. Lt. Governor of Delhi and others, AIR 1984 S.C. 1721 : 1984 R.R.R. 207, I find that even if there is some defect in the publication of the substance of the notification under section 4 of the Act or even if it has to be accepted as is contended by the learned counsel for the petitioners for argument sake that there was no publication of the substance of the notification, no prejudice has been caused to the petitioners in any manner. Most of them did file objections under section 5A of the Act and the same have been dealt with and disposed of by the respondent authorities before the issuance of the notification under section 6 of the Act. Further, it is not the case of any of the petitioners that they or he had no knowledge about these acquisition proceedings. As has been observed by their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Deepak Pahwa''s case (supra) the objections could be filed by all or any of the landowners within a period of thirty days from either the date of publication of the notification in the gazette or the date of public notice of the substance of the notification in the locality concerned, whichever is later. I thus reject this contention of the learned counsel for the petitioners.

The third and the last contention of the learned counsel is noticed above has only to be stated to be rejected in view of the stand of the respondent authorities. It has been pleaded on their behalf that in order to develop the land sought to be acquired for residential, commercial and industrial purposes, they have drawn a masterplan and some of the areas ''which could be adjusted in the masterplan, was adjusted and left out of acquisition proceedings''. Besides this I find that there is no specific allegation levelled by the petitioners against any specific authority which can be accused of mala fides or discriminatory disposition towards the petitioners. Merely because some areas have been left out of acquisition, cannot be ground to justify or sustain the charge of discrimination as suggested by the learned counsel for the petitioners. After all the State authorities cannot acquire all the land of all the persons. Above all this it has been stated in the return of these authorities that in case at any stage they felt the necessity of acquiring the areas left out now, they would like to acquire the same at a later stage.

No other argument having been raised, this petition obviously has to be dismissed and is so dismissed but with no order as to costs.