GENU BHIVAJI RAO Vs. SPECIAL LAND ACQUISITION OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By this common judgment, we will dispose of 165 appeals filed by the State, 80 appeals filed by the claimants, 45 Cross objections filed by the claimants in State Appeals and 330 connected Civil Applications.

(2.) The Special Land Acquisition Officer (hereinafter referred to as "the SLAO"), while exercising his power as Collector, published a notification on 5th May, 1994, under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), clearly stating the intention of the Government to acquire the land from the revenue estate of village Mukane, Tal. Igatpuri, District Nashik, for a public purpose viz. Mukane Dam Project. In furtherance to this, declaration under Section 6 of the Act was issued on 7th July, 1994, which was published in the official gazette on the same day. The SLAO, after complying with the requirements of the provisions of the Act, published his award dated 20th October, 1995, under Section 11 of the Act. The SLAO classified the lands in differrent groups and based upon the assesment, gave compensation varying from Rs. 37,000/per hectare to Rs. 1,17,000/per hectare. The total land acquired was 349 hectares 59.3 ares. It has been noticed in the award that an enquiry under Section 11 of the Act was carried out but no objections were received. The claimants had filed their claims claiming different compensation for lands varying from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 7 lakhs. The land ownersclaimants felt disatisfied from the award of the Collector made applications under Section 18 of the Act. These applications were referred by the Collector to the Court of competent jurisdiction and the Reference Court vide its judgment and award dated 14th February, 2006, after considering the oral and documentary evidence on record, fixed the compensation as follows: Rs. 2,12,500/per hectare for jirayat land. Rs. 1,06,250/per hectare for potkharaba land.

(3.) Still the claimants felt aggrieved from the judgment of the reference Court preferred appeals before this Court praying for further enhancement of the awarded compensation. They have challenged the correctness and legality of the judgment of the Reference Court. According to them, the Court has ignored relevant piece of evidence and has not given the appropriate compensation to the claimants. We may also notice here that during the pendency of this appeal, an application being Civil Application No. 6581 of 2007 was filed by the claimants in First Appeal No. 1377 of 2007. It was prayed by the applicant that the additional evidence be permitted to be led in the First Appeal by taking on record the map Exhibit1 and 7/12 extracts annexed to that application. When this application came up for hearing, the same was disposed of by us vide our order dated 22nd January, 2008, which reads as under.