VIJAY KUMAR AGRAWAL Vs. STATE OF C G

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Since common questions have been raised for consideration in all these appeals, they are being disposed of by this common judgment. Brief facts leading to filing of these appeals are that in Land Acquisition Case No. 151-A/82 of the year 1989-90 pending before the Land Acquisition Officer, Raipur, a common award dated 5-8-1991 was passed by him and certain amounts were awarded to the appellants. Since the appellants had not accepted the award passed by the Land Acquisition Officer, they filed written applications to the Collector requiring the matters to be referred for the determination of the Court on certain grounds. On this, the matters were referred by the Collector to the District Court, on which, 4 M.J.Cs. vide Nos. 8/2005 (Deendayal Agrawal Vs. State of Chhattisgarh and another), 9/2005 (Gopal Das Agrawal Vs. State of Chhattisgarh and another), 10/2005 (Bhajanlal Agrawal Vs. State of Chhattisgarh and another) and 7/2005 (Vijay Kumar Agrawal Vs. State of Chhattisgarh and another) were registered and ultimately all were decided by the Trial Court vide separate awards dated 10-5-2005, 12-5-2005, 12-5-2005 and 10-5-2005 respectively. By the aforesaid awards, the learned Additional District Judge enhanced the principal amount of compensation, also directed for payment of interest as per Clause 23(1-A) and 23(2) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act") in their favour. The operative part, i.e., Clause 2 of the awards, which is almost common in all the cases, is quoted as under:--

(2.) After passing of the aforesaid awards, the matters were put to execution and in execution, the appellants/claimants filed their own calculations in relation to the respective awards passed in their favour. The calculations filed by the appellants in their execution case were opposed by the State.

(3.) The contentions of the appellants before the Executing Court were that the interest which has been awarded vide Clause 2 of the awards under Section 23(1-A) is the interest from the date of notification under Section 4(1) of the Act till the date of passing of the awards, which means that till the date of awards ultimately passed by the Reference Court under Section 18 of the Act and the appellants were entitled to get the interest from the date of notification under Section 4(1) till 10-5-2005 and 12-5-2005, i.e., the date of respective awards, which were passed by the Reference Court in their favour.