ANILKUMAR Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) As both these writ petitions involve a common issue, they are taken up for consideration together and disposed by this common judgment.

(2.) The petitioner in both these Writ Petitions is the same and in these Writ Petitions he is aggrieved by the action taken by the requisitioning authorities in acquiring only portions of a building, that in partly under his ownership and refusing to accede to his request for acquiring the balance portion of the building. After the Writ Petitions were admitted, and on receipt of a notice asking him to surrender the portions that were acquired, he preferred Interlocutory Applications seeking for a stay of dispossession from the portions of the building that were acquired from him by the respondents.

(3.) Through a statement/counter affidavit filed on behalf of the 3rd and 4th respondents, it is brought to the notice of this Court that what was acquired was a part of the building in which the petitioner herein and his brother Sri.Shaji Kumar had rights over separate portions. In other words, the two rooms on either side of the acquired part of the building are in the ownership of the petitioner and the room in the centre is owned by Sri.Shaji Kumar. The petitioner seeks to invoke the provisions of Section 94 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (hereinafter referred to as "the 2013 Act") to contend that, inasmuch as acquisition of only a portion of the property under his ownership will deprive him of the benefit of the entire property owned by him, the respondents should be directed to acquire the entire portion of the building under his ownership. He relies on the decision of a Full Bench of this Court in Saramma Itticheriya v. State of Kerala [2008 (1) KLT 6] to contend that once a desire is exercised by the owner of a building to acquire the entire building, then the only option for the Land Acquisition Officer is either to acquire the entire building or to withdraw from the acquisition.