DEENDAYAL AGRAWAL, BHAJANLAL AGRAWAL Vs. STATE OF CHHATTISGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Since common questions have been raised for consideration in all these Writ Petitions, they are being disposed of by this Common Order.

(2.) The brief facts leading to filing of these Writ Petitions are that in a Land Acquisition Case bearing No. 151-A/82 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 petitioners. Since the petitioners had not accepted the award, passed by the Land Acquisition Officer, they filed written applications to the Collector requiring the matters to be referred by the Collector 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 MJCs vide Nos. 8/2005 (Deendayal Agrawal v. State of Chhattisgarh) 9/2005 (Gopal Das Agrawal v. State of Chhattisgarh), 10/2005 (Bhajanlal Agrawal v. State of Chhattisgarh) and 7/2005 (Vijay Kumar Agrawal v. State of Chhattisgarh) were registered and ultimately, all were decided by the Court of X Additional District Judge, Raipur 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 awarded to the petitioners and he 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: ...[VERNACULAR TEXT OMMITED]...

(3.) After passing of the aforesaid awards, the matters were put to execution before the said Court and in execution, the petitioners/claimants filed their own calculations in relation to the respective awards passed in their favour and prayed for payment of the awarded amount to them. The calculations filed by the petitioners in their execution cases were opposed by the State. The contention of the petitioners before the Executing Court were that the interest which has been awarded vide Clause 2 of the awards under Section 23(1A) is the interest from the date of notification under Section 4(1) of the said 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 said Act and the petitioners 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., till the date of respective awards, which were passed by the reference Court in their favour.