STATE OF GUJARAT Vs. KUVARJI DHURAJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All Appeals arise against the judgements and orders passed by the Reference Court, which are impugned in the respective First Appeals. The learned APP appearing for the Appeallant, Mr.Pujari and Mr.Sutar for Mr.Majmudar, learned Counsel for some of the claimants confirm the position that the present appeals are arising from the group of acquisition, which came to be considered by the earlier Bench of this Court (Coram: J.N.Bhatt and Akshay H. Mehta, JJ) in First Appeal No.6566 of 1999 and allied matters decided on 5.7.2001. The learned Counsel also state that as per their information, the matters are still pending before the Reference Court.

(2.) It may be recorded that this Court in the similar matter, when the same question was considered, had observed as under :- In the result, we are left with only one alternative, that is to accept the request to remand matters. Consequently, the impugned common judgment and resultant awards in favour of the respondents, original claimants and questioned in this group of appeals shall stand quashed and set aside. The entire group is directed to be remitted to the reference Court with a direction to permit the parties to lead evidence on all the points, like a, 'de-novo' proceedings. Since we are remitting the entire group to the reference Court, obviously, without expressing any opinion on the issues raised in the appeals and the reference Court shall have to determine and decide, after permitting evidence to be adduced by the parties on all the points, in accordance with law, as expeditiously as possible, and preferably within a period of three months from the date of receipt of record and proceedings and the writ of this Court. In view of the peculiar facts and special circumstances, it will be open for the parties or their advocates to appropriately, request the concerned District Judge for allotment of the said work to a particular Judge or a Court, who may be able to consolidate all the groups, if need be, and deal and dispose of as expeditiously, as possible since the gist and genesis of this group of appeals would go to show that they are very old and sensitive matters. Upon such a request being made, the concerned District Judge shall pass appropriate order after hearing the advocates of the parties, so as to save time, money and to a extent lessen the burden on the unbreakable backlog. Same situation would prevail in the present case and there being no other distinguishing circumstances. On the contrary, it appeas that the present first group of First Appeals are the left-out matters of First Appeals, which could not be considered at the relevant point of time, though they are disposed of by similar other common judgement arising from the same land acquisition.

(3.) In view of the above, the following orders :-