ASSOCIATION TO UPLIFT RURAL UNDERTAKING ACTION, TRAINING AND EDUCATION (AUREATE) AND ANR. Vs. STATE OF ASSAM AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD Mr. S.P. Roy, learned counsel for the petitioners, and Mr. D. Das, learned counsel for the respondent No. 5. Also heard Mr. P K Mushahary, learned Senior Government Advocate, Assam, for the respondent Nos. 1 to 4.

(2.) BY making this application, the petitioners have approached this Court seeking issuance of appropriate writ or writs prohibiting, restraining and forbidding the respondents from evicting the petitioners from the land and house described in schedule to the application, their case being, in brief, thus : The petitioner No. 1 is a registered society engaged in social works for upliftment of down trodden people with petitioner No. 2 as its Secretary. The petitioner society came into existence in the year 1995 and has been in occupation of the said land by erecting boundary walls around the same and also by constructing one Assam -type house thereon since 1995. On 25.03.2004, the officials of the respondent No. 5 alongwith the local police attempted to forcibly evict the petitioners, but did not succeed and it is on that day, i.e. on 25.03.2004, that the petitioners came to know that the said land had been settled by the Government in favour of the respondent No. 5 by order, dated 29.04.2003, though under the Assam Land and Revenue Regulations, 1836, a person, who is in possession of the Government land, is entitled to settlement and, hence, the land, in question, ought to have been settled with the petitioners. Having not given any notice either under the Asam Land and Revenue Regulations or under the Assam Public Premises (Eviction and Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971, the petitioners cannot be evicted.

(3.) FROM what have been pointed out above, what clearly emerges is that the entire claim of the petitioners rests upon their assertion that the petitioner No. 1 is in occupation of the land, in question. This assertion is vehemently denied and disputed by the respondents. The land, in question, stands, admittedly, settled in favour of the respondent No. 5 by the appropriate authority. The records produced by the learned Government Advocate, Assam, and also the documents annexed to the affidavit -in -opposition aforementioned indicate that the possession of the land was handed over to the respondent No. 5 as far back as on 07.05.2003 and this aspect of the matter was recorded in the certificate of the Assistant Settlement Officer, Guwahati, contained in Memo No. SCCR 23/2002/783 -84, dated 02.06.2003. There is no counter allegation made by the petitioners that this certificate contained in memorandum aforementioned is a fabricated one.