COMPETENT AUTHORITY Vs. BARANGORE JUTE FACTORY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) LEAVE granted. These appeals arise from a common judgment of the High Court. The contesting parties before the High Court filed special leave petitions in this Court against the judgment of the High Court dated 7th April, 2004. The special leave petitions filed by the Competent Authority are registered as SLP (Civil) No. 16820 of 2004 while those filed by the National Highways Authority of India are SLP (Civil) Nos. 17874 -75 of 2004. The Writ Petitioners before the High Court have also filed a petition which is numbered as SLP (Civil) 18773 of 2004. Since all the petitions arise from a common judgment, they were heard together and are being disposed of by this judgment. For sake of convenience the land owners are being referred to as the writ petitioners in this judgment. The other main parties are the Competent Authority and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and they will be referred to as such in the judgment. The subject matter of these appeals is the compulsory acquisition of certain lands belonging to the writ petitioners by the Central Government vide Notification dated 11th June, 1998 under S.3A of the National Highways Act, 1956 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Act'). The writ petitioners challenged the acquisition of their lands on various grounds. The Division Bench of the High Court by its impugned judgment dated 7th April, 2004 disposed of the writ petition holding the impugned Notification regarding compulsory acquisition of land to be bad in law. However, keeping in view the fact that possession of the acquired land had already been taken by the authorities, the High Court felt that no useful purpose would be served by quashing the Notification. The High Court also took note of the power of the acquiring authority to issue a fresh Notification for acquisition of the land which could only lead to possible increase in the amount of compensation payable to the owners. Keeping these aspects in view it ordered that an additional amount of compensation be awarded to the land owners. Accordingly, an additional amount calculated at 30% over and above the compensation already determined was ordered to be paid to the writ petitioners. The Competent authority is aggrieved of the order of the High Court holding the Notification regarding the acquisition of the land to be illegal, while the NHAI is aggrieved of the award of additional 30 per cent amount as compensation to the Writ Petitioners. The owners / writ petitioners are aggrieved of the Notification not being quashed in spite of having been declared as illegal.

(2.) THE acquisition of land in the present case is under the National Highways Act, 1956. The power to acquire land is contained in S.3A of the Act. According to sub -s.(1) where the Central Government is satisfied that for a public purpose, any land is required for the building, maintenance, management or operation of a national highway or part thereof, it may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare its intention to acquire such land. sub -s.(2) provides that every Notification under sub -s.(1) shall give a brief description of the land. Under sub -s.(3) the Competent Authority is required to cause the substance of the notification to be published in two local newspapers, one of which will be in a vernacular language. The impugned notification in this case is challenged on the ground that it does not give a brief description of the land sought to be compulsorily acquired. There has been lot of argument on either side on this aspect. The Competent Authority and the NHAI have supported the Notification urging that brief description of the land contained in the Notification meets the requirement of the statute while according to the writ petitioners it is not so. A copy of the impugned Notification dated 11th June, 1993 has been placed on record. As per the Notification, a brief description of the land sought to be acquired is given in the Appendix to the Notification. In order to appreciate the rival contentions it is necessary to reproduce some portions of the Appendix.

(3.) THE learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority as also the counsel for the NHAI have tried to support the Notification. According to them, the requirement in sub -s.(2) of S.3A of the Act is only of giving a brief description of the land. Brief description does not mean a complete description. That would not be the intention of the statute. An acquisition Notification is only required to convey to the persons claiming interest in the land about the intention of the Government to acquire a particular land and the description given in the impugned Notification meets that requirement. The learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority had really no answer to the problem demonstrated above about identification of land where only part of a larger chunk of land was being acquired. Faced with this difficulty and in an effort to ensure that the impugned Notification is upheld, the learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority raised various subsidiary issues which according to him are sufficient to non suit the Writ Petitioners. They are :