MANOJ KUMAR SINGH Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This matter was brought as a Public Interest Litigation. It is about an open space within the urban agglomeration of Patna known as Hardinge Park. There is no issue, whether it is archives or history, that this Park had been laid out at the time of the visit of Lord Hardinge as Viceroy. Viceroy's and Vicereines of colonial empire meant a lot to those who were administrators under the Crown. A Viceroy had to be feted with grandeur. In those days, what is present Bihar was part of Bengal. People seem to forget that what is Bihar today, at the time of Viceroy Hardinge was part of one province known as Bengal, a province important for the Empire. From Calcutta the Empire moved eastward to take in Burma, and westward for the drama of the grand durbar at Delhi. To the west of Calcutta, the next important city was Patna.

(2.) At the time of the First World War, particularly the period between 1912 and for the next five years, acquisitions were undertaken under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. Sovereign owers were utilised to usurp or acquire peoples land to lay out a city known as New Patna. The Court has no hesitation in making an observation that the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 in the manner in which it utilised the sovereign powers, displayed the sting of colonial rule. Many facets of usurpation of land by the colonial rule owe their origins to this enactment.

(3.) Today, the Court has before it the records, the files and the notings which begin from 1914. The demarcation of the file is file No. IG/3 of 1915. The subject of the File is Transfer of a piece of land measuring 24.30 acres in the new Capital site at Patna to the Hardinge Park Committee." The file notings make very interesting reading. This Hardinge Park Committee was a camouflage. Land was acquired to dedicate a memorial for the Viceroy, as a public Park.