STATE OF HIMACHAL PRADESH Vs. JIWAN SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) For constructing Beas Dam at Pong, extensive areas of land were acquired. Notifications under Sections 4 and 6 of the Land Acquisition Act (referred to as the Act) were issued on 1 -4 -1963 and 18 -1 -1969 respectively. These included villages as well as agricultural lands of the villagers. Claims to compensation were filed by interested parsons. It was submitted that no regular sale of land had taken place which could be used as exemplars. Few transactions of sale were stated to be either due to exigency of circumstances such as marriages, litigations and prolonged illnesses, or by some big landlords who to hoodwink the ceiling of land had transferred a part of their land to their kith and kin on the basis of fictitious low prices in order to avoid registration charges etc. It was, therefore, submitted by the claimants that the market value of their land maybe determined on 20 times of their average annual produce from the land per kanal out of each class of land.

(2.) Faced with such objections crop cutting experiments were carried out in representative and selective lands of various kinds in various tikkas in the "Haldoon area" as is apparent from award No. 183 dated 2 -4 -1969 given by Shri Jaswant Singh, Land Acquisition Collector, Beas Dam Project, District Talwara. The result was that Rs. 100 was calculated as the gross annual income of the crops from one kanal of Nahri Do -fasIi land. The net income was calculated at Rs/50 per kanal of such land. The market value on the rental basis capitalised at 20 years purchase of Nahri Do -fasli was calculated at Rs. 1000 per kanal. However, Shri Jaswant Singh, Land Acquisition Collector, decided to add the offer made by the acquiring department to the aforementioned market value and work out a mean which was offered as the market price. Accordingly Rs. 300 per kanal for Nahri Do -fas 11 offered by the department was added to Rs. 1000 and the mean of Rs. 650 per kanal of Nahri Do -fasli land was offered to the claimants.

(3.) Shri Didar Singh, Land Acquisition Collector, vide his award dated 31 -1 -1972, adopted the offer made by Shri Jaswant Singh since the Land in question was held comparable with the one for which Shri Jaswant Singh had made the offer. Shri Didar Singh held : "Sweeping acquisition is being made for the reservoir area for Beas Project in tehsil Dehra and Nurpur. The interested persons and Project authorities raised similar objections in several other tikas where the acquisition has been completed. The learned Land Acquisition Collector Shri Jaswant Singh in his award of tika Bihari Mauza Dugha dated 2 -4 -1969 has discussed in detail the contention of the interested persons and the Acquiring Department. The rates given in tika Bihari for different classes of land are quite fair and I agree with the justification given by the learned collector in his above said award. Moreover the land has also been acquired for Beas Dam in tika Bari khas of the same mauza which is adjoining to this tika. The fertility, productivity and potentiality of land in this tika can favourably be compared with tika Bari Khas, for which the award had been given on the same rates per kanal for tika Bihari".