TMI Blog2005 (11) TMI 490X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... d for permission of court to take possession of the land under acquisition. But without any order being passed on that application, it hastened to take possession after giving only one day's notice when the Act requires 60 days notice. Moreover, the possession is to be taken through the Commissioner of Police or the Collector. This was not done. Neither of the three statutory requirements for taking possession were fulfilled. Thus taking of possession of the lands in the present case is in total violation of the statutory provisions. The learned counsel for the acquiring authority submits that possession was taken on basis of oral observations of the court. This is a totally misconceived plea. Court orders are always in black and white. Oral orders are never passed. Moreover, this plea is wrong because the Division Bench observed in its order dated 27th March,2003 that it never dealt with question of possession. The result is that taking possession of the land sought to be acquired cannot be said to be in accordance with law in this case and does not improve matters for the NHAI. Having held that the impugned notification regarding acquisition of land is invalid because it fail ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... umit Dhingra, Sandeep Tiwari and V.B. Joshi, Advs For the Respondent : None JUDGMENT ARUN Kumar, J. 1. Leave granted. 2. These appeals arise from a common judgment of the High Court. The contesting parties before the High Court filed special leave petitions in this Court against the judgment of the High Court dated 7th April, 2004. The special leave petitions filed by the Competent Authority are registered as SLP (Civil) No. 16820 of 2004 while those filed by the National Highways Authority of India are SLP (Civil) Nos.17874-75 of 2004. The Writ Petitioners before the High Court have also filed a petition which is numbered as SLP (Civil) 18773 of 2004. Since all the petitions arise from a common judgment, they were heard together and are being disposed of by this judgment. For sake of convenience the land owners are being referred to as the writ petitioners in this judgment. The other main parties are the Competent Authority and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and they will be referred to as such in the judgment. 3. The subject matter of these appeals is the compulsory acquisition of certain lands belonging to the writ petitioners by the Central Government vide Noti ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... mpulsorily acquired. There has been lot of argument on either side on this aspect. The Competent Authority and the NHAI have supported the Notification urging that brief description of the land contained in the Notification meets the requirement of the statute while according to the writ petitioners it is not so. A copy of the impugned Notification dated 11th June, 1993 has been placed on record. As per the Notification, a brief description of the land sought to be acquired is given in the Appendix to the Notification. In order to appreciate the rival contentions it is necessary to reproduce some portions of the Appendix. 5. The Appendix contains a long list of various portions of lands sought to be acquired. The list runs into more than 10 pages in the paper book. We have chosen to reproduce only a small portion of the Appendix in order to appreciate the rival contentions of the learned counsel for the parties. The learned counsel for the writ petitioners submitted that the purpose of giving a brief description of the land sought to be acquired is that the person whose land is to be taken away, should at least know what he is being deprived of. This becomes all the more necessary ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... to them, the requirement in sub-Section (2) of Section 3A of the Act is only of giving a brief description of the land. Brief description does not mean a complete description. That would not be the intention of the statute. An acquisition Notification is only required to convey to the persons claiming interest in the land about the intention of the Government to acquire a particular land and the description given in the impugned Notification meets that requirement. The learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority had really no answer to the problem demonstrated above about identification of land where only part of a larger chunk of land was being acquired. Faced with this difficulty and in an effort to ensure that the impugned Notification is upheld, the learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority raised various subsidiary issues which according to him are sufficient to non-suit the Writ Petitioners. They are : (1) Delay on part of writ petitioners in challenging the Notification under Section 3A(1); (2) Failure to file objections under section 3C within twenty one days as prescribed in sub-section (1); (3) Applying for compensation for the acquired land giving ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... uires a particular act to be done in a particular manner, the act has to be done in that manner alone. Every word of the statute has to be given its due meaning. In our view, the impugned notification fails to meet the statutory mandate. It is vague. The least that is required in such cases is that the acquisition notification should let the person whose land is sought to be acquired know what he is going to lose. The impugned notification in this case is, therefore, not in accordance with the law. 8. While dealing with the question of brief description of land in the acquisition notifications, reference was made to some judgments of this Court where acquisition Notifications under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act had come up for consideration on account of challenge being leveled on ground of vagueness of the Notifications. In most of these cases, Plan of the area under acquisition was made part of the notifications to show that the requirement of description of land was met. This lead us to inquire whether there was any site plan forming part of the impugned Notification. 9. The availability of a Plan would have made all the difference. If there is a Plan, the area under acq ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... -availability of any Plan linked to the Notification, fortifies the argument that the description of the land under acquisition in the impugned Notification fails to meet the legal requirement of a brief description of the land which renders the Notification invalid. 10. The absence of plan also renders the right to file objections under Section 3C(1) nugatory. In the absence of a Plan, it is impossible to ascertain or know which part of acquired land was to be used and in what manner. Without this knowledge no objections regarding use of land could be filed. Since the objection regarding use of the land had been given up by the writ petitioners, we need not go any further in this aspect. We would, however, like to add that unlike Section 5A of the Land Acquisition Act,1894 which confers a general right to object to acquisition of land under Section 4 of the said Act, Section 3C(1) of the National Highways Act gives a very limited right to object. The objection can be only to the use of the land under acquisition for purposes other than those under sub-section 3A(1). The Act confers no right to object to acquisition as such. This answers the argument advanced by the learned counsel ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... we must note that at the relevant time in 1998 and thereafter till 2001, the Writ Petitioner Company had no existence. On account of demands of workers of the factory and to meet other statutory demands, a committee was appointed by the High Court in the winding up proceedings pending before it to run the factory. The claim for compensation was filed by somebody as the General Manager of the Company. He had no authority to do so. The committee had to manage only the factory and had nothing to do with ownership issues. So far as details of land under acquisition contained in the claim is concerned, it is based on material contained in the impugned Notification and the Appendix. Filing of such a claim by somebody who had no authority to do so, cannot deprive the owners of their right to challenge the acquisition of the lands owned by the Company. Therefore, neither delay in filing the Writ Petition nor filing of claim for compensation can stand in the way of the Writ Petitioners in seeking relief in these proceedings. 13. About the argument based on vesting of the land in the Central Government, it is to be seen that if the initial Notification is bad, all steps taken in pursuance th ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... is was not done. Neither of the three statutory requirements for taking possession were fulfilled. Thus taking of possession of the lands in the present case is in total violation of the statutory provisions. The learned counsel for the acquiring authority submits that possession was taken on basis of oral observations of the court. This is a totally misconceived plea. Court orders are always in black and white. Oral orders are never passed. Moreover, this plea is wrong because the Division Bench observed in its order dated 27th March,2003 that it never dealt with question of possession. The result is that taking possession of the land sought to be acquired cannot be said to be in accordance with law in this case and does not improve matters for the NHAI. 15. At this stage we would like to note that the learned counsel appearing for the writ petitioners made reference to a publication in the nature of a brochure issued by the West Bengal Government wherein it is mentioned that motels/shops/petrol pumps etc. will also come up in the area where the acquired land is situate. On this basis it was sought to be argued that such use of the acquired land would be contrary to the use mentio ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... e are precedents by way of judgments of this Court where in similar situations instead of quashing the impugned notification, this Court shifted the date of the notification so that the land owners are adequately compensated. Reference may be made to: (a) Ujjain Vikas Pradhikaran v. Rajkumar Johri and others [1992 (1)SCC 328] (b) Gauri Shankar Gaur Ors. v. State of UP Ors. [1994 (1) SCC 92] (c) Haji Saeed Khan Ors. v. State of UP Ors. [2001 (9) SCC 513] In that direction the next step is what should be the crucial date in the facts of the present case for determining the quantum of compensation. We feel that the relevant date in the present case ought to be the date when possession of the land was taken by the respondents from the writ petitioners. This date admittedly is 19th February, 2003. We, therefore, direct that compensation payable to the writ petitioners be determined as on 19th February, 2003, the date on which they were deprived of possession of their lands. We do not quash the impugned notification in order not to disturb what has already taken place by way of use of the acquired land for construction of the national highway. We direct that the compensation for the acqu ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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