K V RAMACHANDRA RAO Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) all these writ petitions can be disposed of by a common order since they question the validity of the land acquisition proceedings, particularly the invocation of urgency clause viz., Section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, (hereinafter referred to as the act).

(2.) the facts leading to these writ petitions may briefly be stated as follows :- the Mangalore super thermal power project (hereinafter referred to as the project) is a project under the national thermal power . Corporation Ltd., (hereinafter referred to as the corporation). The corporation is a generating company incorporated under the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1948. It has its registered office at ntpc bhavan, scope complex, No.7, lodhi road, New Delhi. The corporation was set upby the government of India in the year 1975. The object of setting up this corporation is to supplement the shortfalls in the requirement of electrical energy by the various states. The corporation set up various super thermal power projects in different parts of the country, and it is now proposing to set up one such project in dakshina kannada district of the Karnataka state, primarily for the benefit of the people of the Karnataka state. As a matter of fact the then chief minister wrote as early as 4th october, 1988 to the minister for energy, govt. Of India , as follows :-

(3.) the petitioners who are all owners of smoll holdings, question the acquisition only on two grounds. Mr. Mohandas n. Hegde, learned counsel for the petitioners, argues that as early as 21-10-1989 a decision to dispense with statutory enquiry under Section 5-a of the act was taken with respect to an extent of 1433.19 acres of land. If that be so, the invocation of urgency clause by resorting to Section 17 (4) of the act is bad in law. Id other words, no real urgency is made out. It is only when the acquisition proceedings cannot brook delay of even 30 days, urgency clause could be invoked. In support of this, reliance is placed on narayan govind gavate v State of maharashtra, AIR 1977 SC 183. In k.u.m. samiti v raton prakash, AIR 1988 SC 1459, the invocation of urgency clause was found to be imminent and therefore that was justified; but here in this case no such imminence exists. Courts have always taken the view that where an urgency clause is invoked as a matter of course that would be bad in law. Learned counsel cites seshagiri v spl. Tahsildar for land acquisition, AIR 1965 ker. 92, acchanaik v State of mysore, 1974(2) KAR. Lj. 453, etc. The second ground of attack is that even before the approval of the project, the construction of staff quarters had gone on, and the public money should not be spent in that way.