KALIYANCHAND DEVILAL Vs. KANCHANBAI BUTILAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition Under Article 227 of the Constitution by one of the parties to a dispute regarding the apportionment of compensation granted by the Collector in a land acquisition case. The ground is that the Court to which an application for reference by the opposite party was forwarded by the Collector should have held that the application to the Collector being timebarred under Section 18 (2) of the land Acquisition Act, he was not competent to entertain the reference. Actually, it rejected the petitioner's prayer to this effect, holding that once the reference had been made by the Collector it was not competent to consider its propriety or validity, but should straightway proceed to determine, after noticing the parties, the objection raised in the application.

(2.) WITHOUT going into the merits of the contentions of the parties for and against "limitation" of the opposite party's application under Section 18 of the Land acquisition Act before the Collector, we have hear to decide whether once the reference has been received from the Collector, the Court is competent to see whether or not the Collector should have dismissed the application as timebarred under Section 18 (2) of the Act.

(3.) THE facts are simple and are common ground. The parties seem to be cosharers or at least claim to be so in the property that has been acquired. The petitioner himself made an application under Section 18 which was forwarded to the Court and is being considered as such. Some time later, the opposite party made her objections before the Collector. This she did in two applications, the first on 30-9-1959 asking only for a stay of the disbursement of the compensation till the filing and disposal of a partition suit by her. On more or less the same averments the second application was made on 9-11-1959, with the further prayer that this might be forwarded to the Court as a reference. The Collector forwarded it. It is not clear whether the effect of Sub-section (2) was raised before him; but if it was, he considered it to be of no consequence. Anyway, when the application came before the Court, the present petitioner who was already before it apropos of his own reference, prayed that it should not be entertained, the Collector himself having committed a mistake in sending it up in disregard of Section 18 (2) of the act. The Court took the position that once a reference had been made by the collector, it was not for it to sit in judgment Over him, but it was his duty to proceed to investigate the merits of the objection in the manner provided in section 20. From this order the petitioner has come up to this Court under Article 227 of the Constitution.