MELA RAM Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners have filed this writ petition challenging the acquisition proceedings of the land in dispute. The facts giving rise to this writ petition may be summarised as under:- The petitioners are the joint khatedar tenants of the agricultural land comprising of 16 1/4 Killas in Square No. 2 and 10 Killas in Square No. 3. The land was initially purchased by petitioner No. 1 out of the joint family funds of the petitioners and is being used as ioint family property by all the petitioners. It is alleged by the petitioners that on account of some ill-will against the petitioners, who were not cooperating with the authorities in the Nasbandi Operation Programme started in the days of emergency, the authorities wanted to harass the petitioners. With that in view. the local authorities raised a false plea of the requirement of the aforesaid agr cultural land for the so called public purpose of constructing a bus stand and motor garage with a waiting room etc. and. therefore, a notice Under Section 4 of the Rajasthan Land Acquisition Act. 1953 (hereinafter called 'the Act') was issued on 28-3-1977 and it was served upon petitioner No. 1 on 5-4-1977. The said notice is Annexure 1. No notices were, however, served on petitioners Nos. 2 and 3. Petitioner No. 1 filed his objections Under Section 5 of the Act in writing challenging the aforesaid notice. The said objection dated 11-5-1977 is Ex. 1A. The case of the petitioners further is that without giving any notice to non-petitioners NOS. 2 and 3 as required by Sub-section (1) of Section 5 of the Act, the authorities, namely, the Collector, Sriganganagar, got published another notice being Notification No. F12/13/Rev. 771456 dated 16-3-1978 in the Raiasthan Raipatra dated 30-3-1978. This notice is Annexure 2. This notice purports to have been issued Under Section 6 of the Act. The case of the petitioners is that this notification Under Section 6 is in fact not a declaration Under Section 6 inasmuch as the Collector, Sriganganagar. could not have issued such a notification and the delegation of powers in his favour in this respect was invalid. It has further been urged that the powers of making a declaration Under Section 6 of the Act have been conferred on the Collector by pres-sing into service the provisions of Section 260 of the Raiasthan Land Revenue Act although those provisions are not at all attracted. Not only powers Under Section 6 have been delegated to the Collector in this manner but powers Under Section 17 (4) of the Act have also been delegated to him which delegation also is invalid and against the spirit of the Act. The petitioners' case further was that as a matter of fact, the land in dispute was not at all required for any public purpose and that the so-called public purpose of constructing a bus stand and motor garage along with a waiting room etc. is merely sham and in any case, the land in dispute is not at all suitable for that purpose. A number of other grounds have also been raised by the petitiorners in the writ application but the other grounds have not been canvassed by the learned counsel for the petitioners at the time of arguments. The writ petition was originally filed on 1-6-1978 but with the permission of the Court, the same was amended and an amended writ petition has already been submitted. Non-petitioners Nos. 1 to 3 have filed a joint reply tra-versing the allegations of the petitioners. Non-petitioner No. 4, the Municipal Board, Sribijaynagar, has filed a separate reply on almost the same lines.

(2.) I have heard the learned counsel for the parties and have perused the record.

(3.) In my opinion, this writ petition deserves to be accepted on two grounds and I need not go into the other grounds.