Indore (Madhya Pradesh): In a major setback to the Indore Development Authority (IDA), the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court (MPHC) has quashed notification related to acquisition of land for Scheme No 114 Part 1 and Part II.
A division bench comprising of Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice Pranay Verma held that there has been gross illegality and irregularity in the matter of invocation of the urgency clause under Section 17(1) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 dispensing with the enquiry contemplated under Section 5-A which has deprived the appellants of their fundamental right of hearing in the matter.
Manoharlal Trivedi, Padmachand Bansal were among aggrieved persons who had filed a writ appeal in the High Court against the state government and IDA’s move of invoking the urgency clause under Section 17(1) of the Act, 1894 and not giving fair chance to them for hearing.
Upon publication of notification under Section 50(2) in the Gazette on 05.10.1984 the notification under Section 50(3) inviting objections was published in the Gazette after nearly one year and nine months.
The objections took a period of 8 months to be decided and even thereafter it took a further period of three-and-a-half months for publication of the final scheme. Even after publication of the final scheme in the official Gazette dated 03.04.1987 requisition to acquire the land including that of the appellants was made to the Collector, Indore on 10.06.1988 i.e. after a period of 14 months therefrom. In the returns which have been filed by the IDA in all the petitions there is not a whisper as to why such an enormous period of time was taken at each and every step of the proceedings which began with the initial resolution on 06.08.1984 up to the time when requisition was sent to the Collector, Indore for compulsorily acquiring the land on 10.06.1988.
‘The said period is noticeably 3 year and 10 months,’ the court noted and observed that the manner in which the proceedings were conducted by the IDA itself shows that there was no urgency leave aside real urgency in the matter because if had the same been so, then between each step taken by the IDA such inordinate period of time would not have been consumed.
‘After completion of one step there was no legal impediment for the next step to be taken and if there had been any real urgency in the matter, the same would have certainly been taken promptly even if not immediately,’ the court observed.
‘This is not all. After the requisition having been sent to the Collector, Indore for initiating the process of compulsory acquisition of the lands on 10.06.1988, the notification under Section 4(1) of the Act, 1894 was published in the official Gazette on 06.10.1989 i.e. after a period of almost 16 months therefrom. There is no explanation offered by either of the respondents for this period consumed from the date of receiving of the requisition and publication of notification under Section 4(1) along with Section 17(1) dispensing with the provisions of Section 5-A to deprive the land owners/appellants of opportunity of personal hearing. The lethargic attitude of the respondents did not end even with publication of notifications under Section 4(1) and 17 (1),’ the court noted.
With these observations, the court ruled that the notification under Section 4(1) & 6(1) of the Act, 1894 and the consequent award dated 27.11.1992 only in so far as the same relates to the present appellants are hereby quashed.
