PIROJA CAWASJI Vs. SPECIAL LAND ACQUISITION OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a judgment of the Civil Judge (S.D.), Alibag, dated Feb. 28, 1962, in a Reference at the instance of the claimants under section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act dismissing the same.

(2.) The claimants are the owners of land in the village of Kegaon comprising Hissa Nos. 1 and 2 of section No. 214A/1, situated across the harbour somewhere in the vicinity of Uran. A notification under section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act in respect of part of the said land was published by the Government on May 8, 1958, which was followed by a notification under section 6 of the Act on Feb. 9, 1961. The said land was to be acquired for the purpose of a burial ground. Curiously enough, even before notices under section 9 were served upon the claimants, the Special Land Acquisition Officer by his letter dated March 2, 1961 (part of exh. 51) addressed to them purported to extend the time for filing their claim to compensation for which it appears he had previously fixed March 15, 1961. Notices dated March 6, 1961 under section 9 of the Act were thereafter received by the claimants on March 9, 1961 calling upon them to appear before the Special Land Acquisition Officer within 15 days of the receipt of the said notice and to file their objections in regard to the valuation of the said property. Notices to the same effect were, however, published in the Gazette only on March 12, 1961, though it appears to me on a plain reading of section 9 that the publication of the notices thereunder should precede the service of the notice on the parties concerned, since the time to be fixed by the latter notices is stated in the section in relation to the publication of the notices. By a telegram dated March 15, 1961 addressed to the claimants' advocate, the claimants were informed that the inquiry that had to be held under section 1.1 of the Act would be held at Mora on March 20, 1961, that telegram being actually received by the claimants' advocate on March 16, 1961. The claimants sent a telegraphic reply that it was not possible for them to attend on the day fixed on account of serious illness in the family, and in the correspondence that ensued the claimants also pointed out that they could not file a claim for compensation until they were informed which was the precise part of their land which was proposed to be acquired. By a letter dated March 18, 1961 which was received by the claimants only on March 22, 1961, the claimants were, however, informed that the adjournment that they had asked for was refused. It may be noted that by the time the claimants received the said letter, the date fixed for the inquiry under section 11 viz., March 20, 1961, had already passed, and this was pointed out by the claimants by their letter dated March 24, 1961 in which they stated that under the circumstances, it had not been possible for them to attend on March 20, 1961. The Award was published by the Special Land Acquisition Officer on March 29, 1961 whereby he fixed a sum of Rs. 47.50 as compensation in respect of the land under acquisition, which together with Rs. 7.12 being the 15 per cent statutory solatium, aggregated to Rs. 54.62. At the instance of the claimants, a Reference was thereafter made by the Special Land Acquisition Officer in which the claimants claimed a sum of Rs. 1,435 by way of the market value of the land, Rs. 310 in respect of the 15 per cent solatium, and Rs. 300 for severance charges aggregating to Rs. 2,050. The Reference was, however, dismissed by the lower Court on two grounds : (1) the failure of the claimants to file their claim to compensation which precluded them from claiming anything more than the amount that had been awarded by the Land Acquisition Officer ; and (2) there were no grounds on which the compensation fixed by the Special Land Acquisition Officer could be increased.

(3.) As far as the first point is concerned, I have really not come across any proceedings before acquiring authorities which are as irregular as in the present case. To point out a few of the irregularities by way of illustration, notices under section 9 were served on the claimants before they were published and the date for filing their claim to compensation was apparently fixed even before those notices were served; the telegraphic intimation which was given to the claimants fixing the inquiry under section 11 on March 20, 1961 fixed a date which was one day earlier than the time which had been given to the claimants by the letter dated March 2, 1961 (part of exh. 51) written to them by the Land Acquisition Officer. Moreover, the telegraphic intimation which was addressed, not to the claimants themselves but to their advocate, and was received on March 16 barely gave 4 days' time within which the claimants were to prepare statement of claim and to appear personally at a neighbouring village. It is not disputed that, by the said telegram, what was intended to be done was to fix the same date viz., March 20, 1961, both for filing the claim as well as for appearing personally in the inquiry under section 11. The climax of all these irregularities was reached when the intimation relating to the refusal of the adjournment asked for by the claimants in respect of that inquiry was received by the claimants after the inquiry had already been concluded. The Award too is a very vague document in so far as it does not state specifically whether the land under acquisition has been valued by the Special Land Acquisition Officer as agricultural land or as non-agricultural land, or as land with a non-agricultural potentiality. Moreover, the Award proceeds, not on proved instances of sale by means of the production of sale deeds or by the oral evidence of the vendor or the vendee, but by a very general statement in regard to what the Special Land Acquisition Officer has "learnt" in respect of certain unspecified lands acquired for Naval Armaments in the same village, there being some variance even as to the precise rate at which the same had been acquired.