BAI MALIMABU Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In or about the year 1964 or 1965 certain lands situated in the city of Surat were sought to be acquired by the Government of Gujarat for the purposes and the benefit of the employees under the Employees' State Insurance Scheme. Several notifications under S. 4 of the Land acquisition Act, 1894 - hereinafter referred to as the Act. were issued. Objections under S. 5-A of the Act were filed in relation to several of the proposed acquisitions. They were heard by officers especially appointed as Collectors by the State government in accordance with section 3 (c) and reports were submitted by them to the State Government. After considering the reports, the State Government issued notifications under S. 6 of the Act. Several Writ Petitions were filed in the High Court of Gujarat challenging the proposed acquisitions and the notifications under Sections 4 and 6, on various grounds. The grounds of attack were mostly common but in some of the cases the acquisitions were assailed on some special grounds also. The High Court dismissed the writ petitions by a common judgment including the two with which we are concerned in these two appeals. Special Civil Application No. 1117 of 1966 has given rise to Civil Appeal No. 1726 of 1968 and Civil Appeal No. 1406 of 1968 arises out of Special Civil Application No. 745 of 1966. In this judgment it would be convenient to deal with the two appeals and the points urged by the respective counsel for the appellants separately.

(2.) The appellants in this Civil Appeal claimed to be in occupation of the land sought to be acquired in ward No. 7 of Surat city as annual tenants. A notification under S. 4 of the Act was issued on September 17, 1965 for acquiring two parcels of land for constructing a dispensary and staff quarters for the Employees' State Insurance Scheme. The Notification under S. 6 of the Act was issued on June 10, 1966. The Writ Petition was filed on August 22, 1966. It is a matter of helpless regret that the appeal remained pending in this Court for about a decade and the completion and implementation of the acquisition has been delayed so long. All possible objections were taken by the appellants in the High Court to assail the acquisition proceeding. Most of them were useless and devoid of any substance even when the matter was pending in the High Court and they have all fallen flat now in view of several decisions of this Court handed down during the last decade. Yet Mr. J. B. Nagarsheth, learned counsel for the appellants picked up and chose to press several points out of those mentioned in the statement of the case. But none of them stood scrutiny even for a while. We propose to briefly state the points urged before us merely to be rejected in a few lines without any elaboration as no useful purpose will be served by repeating all that has been said in the several earlier decisions of this Court.

(3.) The first point urged was with respect to the constitutional validity of S. 4 of the Act. The attack on the section was on the ground that it was confiscatory in nature and it sought to deprive the appellants of their valuable lands thus violating their fundamental rights guaranteed under Arts. 19 (1) and 31 of the Constitution. The point did not merit any consideration and we, therefore, did not at all feel the necessity of following the constitutional mandate of Article 144-A of the Constitution. It will be sufficient of refer to only two earlier decisions of this Court on this point namely Smt. Somavanti v. State of Punjab (1963) 2 SCR 774: (AIR 1963 SC 151) and Smt. Ratni Devi v. Chief Commissioner, Delhi AIR 1975 SC 1699. We may also add that, even otherwise on the well settled principles of law the attack on the constitutional validity of the section was completely devoid of any substance.