Jatinder Singh and Others vs Land Acquisition Collector and Others

Jaswant Singh, J.—By this common order I shall dispose of the above mentioned two Civil Revisions as common questions of facts and law are involved therein. For the sake of convenience, the facts are being taken from Civil Revision No. 3469 of 2014.

Legal heirs of decree holder are in revision under Article 227 of the Constitution aggrieved against the order dated 26.02.2014 (P-5) passed by the learned Civil Judge(Jr. Divn.), Ludhiana/Executing Court whereby the objections filed by JD i.e. Land Acquisition Collector, Ludhiana in the execution proceedings have been allowed and consequently the execution petition has been dismissed.

Learned Counsel for the petitioner has argued that this Court vide its order dated 23.05.2006 (P-2) had enhanced the compensation for the land owners and ordered that uniform rate of compensation should be awarded. Thus, it was argued that although the petitioner had not preferred the writ petition along with the other writ petitioners, still the said order would be applicable to him and no differential treatment could be meted out to various parts of acquired land. It was further argued by the learned Senior Counsel that the order Annexure (P-2) is applicable to present execution proceedings as well, because power of the High Court is not restrained under Article 226 of the Constitution, especially when the petitioner before this Court was a respondent in one of the writ petitions filed by the Jds and even the respondent can be granted a relief which he or she is entitled to by invoking the provisions of Order 41 Rule 33 CPC.

After hearing learned Counsel for the petitioners and perusing the paper book this Court is of the considered view that both the aforesaid revision petitions are devoid of any merit and the same deserves to be dismissed.

In the present case it is not in dispute that the present petition/decree holder had not preferred a writ petition before this Court for enhancement of compensation granted by the Land Acquisition Collector, Improvement trust Ludhiana. In fact some of the land holders had filed a writ petition for enhancement and to the contrary the State had come up before this Court by filing separate writ petitions for lowering the compensation granted by the Authority below. The said bunch of writ petitions were decided by this Court, whereby the petitions filed by the State were dismissed and those of the land owners were allowed and rate of compensation was enhanced. However, there was no mention in the order Annexure P-2 about those land owners who had not preferred a writ petition before this Court. Thus, the argument that there would be differential treatment to various land owners for various parcels of acquired land, does not hold much ground. As far as the applicability of Order 41 Rule 33 CPC and Article 226 of the Constitution is concerned, this Court is of the opinion that the jurisdiction of the courts cannot be stretched to such an extent that it takes a shape of absurdness. Order 41 Rule 33 CPC talks about the discretion of the Court to grant a relief which it deems appropriate during the course of hearing. However, a specific order has to be passed by the Court while deciding such petitions are without there being any specific order, the Court, while exercising the jurisdiction of a Executing Court cannot go behind the decree and see the intention of the judgment passed. If the petitioner was indeed aggrieved by inadequate compensation, then he could have always preferred a counter claim in the writ petition preferred by the State. However, for the reasons best known to him he chose not to raise any counter claim and now at this stage he cannot be permitted to raise such arguments. In view of the above, finding no merit in both the aforesaid revision petitions, the same are hereby dismissed.