NARENDRA BAHADUR SINGH & Anr. v. STATE OF U.P & Ors.

U .P. Government issued a notification under Section 7 (!) of the U .P. Land Acquisition (Rehabilitation of Refugees) Act, 1948 for acquiring belonging to the appellant for the purpose of Sufferers Cooperatiyc Housing Society. The Society entered into an agreement with· the Govcrnme.nt under sectiop. 6 of the Act. The Land Acquisition Officer determined the amount of compensation for the acquired land. The appellants challenged the \'alidity of the said notification on the following grounds :

#1. The notification did not properly specify acquired. land sought to be

#2. The notification was ultra vires the Act because it sought to acquire land for the rehabilitation of displaced persons and not for the re habilitation of refugees.

#3. The notification was not in accorclance with the provisions of section 7(1) of the Act. The single Judge of the High Court did not go into the first ground but accepted the second and third grounds and quashed the notification. He held tha* according to the definition of refugees in section 2(7) a refugee is a person who has migrated from Pakistan to any place in the U.P. and has been since td!en residing in U.P. and that there was nothing. to show that the displaced persons who are the members of the Society had settled in U.P. While accept ing the third ground the learned Judge held that section 7 ( 1) indicate in the notification that i:t had decided to acquire the land. However, the notification did not mention the expression "decided". requires On an appeal, the Division Bench disagreed with the conclusions of the Single Judge and allowed the appeal. The Division Bench held that the notifi cation was substantially in accordance with the section 7 ( 1) and that the mem bers of the Society consisted of refugees. The Division Bench also held that the notification w.as not vague and it properlv ~pecified the land sought to be acquired. In an appeal by Special Leave the appellants repeated the 3 ground,,. Dismissing the appeal HELD : 1. The ground about the members of the Society not being refugees has The question whether not been taken in the Writ Petition at all. those members have settled in U.P. is essentially' one of tact. Jn the absence of any averment in the writ petition the material facts having bearing on the point could nob be brought on record. A party seeking to challenge the validity of a notification on a ground involving questions of fact should make necessary averments of fact before it can assail the notification on that ground. (229 F-H1 N. B. SINGH v. U.P. STATE (Khanna, J.) 227

#2. The recital in the earlier part of the notification as well as the opera tive part of the notification that the land sball be deemed to have been acquired permanently and shall vest in the State Government lends clear support to the conclusion tbat the State Government decided to acquire the land and the order of acquisition was me_rely an implementation of that decision. The fact that the word decided has not been used in the notification would not prove fatal when the entire tenor of the notification reveals the decision of the State Govt. to acquire land. The court would not strike down a notification for acquisition on hypertechnicality; what is needed is substantial compli ance with requirement. impugned notification clearly satisfies [230 D-FJ law and A B ,/#\.

#3. The contention that the notification in question is vague is not sub stantiated. The notification makes an express reference to the site plan. [230 G-231 A] CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No. 297 of 1976. C Appeal by Special Leave from the Judgment and Order dated the 16-10-74 of the Aliahabad High Court in Special Appeal No. 169/72. S. T. Desai, M. K. Garg, K. B. Rohtagi, V. K. Jain and M. M. j Kaslzyap, for the Appellant.

#0. P. Rana for Respondents 1-4. V. M. Tarkunde, Pramod Swamp and R. S. Verma for Respon dent No. 5. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by KHANNA, J.-This appeal by special leave is against the judgment reversing on of a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, appeal the decision of learned single Judge, whereby notification dated April 23, 1966 issued by the State Government under section 7 (1) of the U.P. Land Acquisition (Rehabilitation of Refugees) Act, 1948 (herdnafter referred to as the Act) had been quashed. As a result of the decision of the Division Bench, the writ petition filed by appellants to quash that notification stood dismissed. The Sufferers' Co-operative Housing Society, Jaunpur, respondent, applied to the Uttar Pradesh Government in 1955 for acquiring four acres of land for the purpose of erecting houses, shops and workshops for the rehabilitation of the· refugees who were members of that so ciety. At the instance of the State Government, the society deposited a sum of Rs. 15,000 towards the cost of the land to be acquired. In 1964, the society entered into an agreement with the State Government under section 6 of the Act. The State Government thereafter publish ed on April 23, 1966, the impugned notification and the same reads as under: "Under sub-section (l) of section 7 of the U.P. Land Acquisition (Rehabilitation of Refugees) Act No. XXVI of 1948, the Governor of Uttar Pradesh is pleased to declare that he is satisfied that the land mentioned in the Schedule is needed and is suitable for the erection of houses, shops and I D E F G H A B c D E F G H 228 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1977] 2 S.C.R. workshops for the rehabilitation of displaced persons and/ or for the provision of amenities directly connected therewith. All the persons interested in the land in question are, therefore, re quired to appear personally or by duly authorised agent before the Compensation Officer of the Distt. at Jaunpur on the twenty seventh day of April 1966, with necessary documentary or other evidence for the determination of the amount of compensation under section 11 of the Act. The Collector of Jaunpur is directed to take possession of alioresaid land fourteen days after the publication or this notice in the official gazette. Upon the publication of this notice, the aforesaid land shall be deemed to have been acquired permanently and shall vest absolutelv in the State Government free from all encumbrances from the. begin~ ning of the day on which the notice is so published. SCHEDULE ! r~ Di~tt. Pargana Mauza Plot No. Area Municipality Cantonment, Town area or Notified area Mohalla Diwan Shah Kabir alias Tartala Pargana Have Ii, Tahsil Jaunpur Municipal Area Jaunpur 154 149 153 2 shops No. 6 aod 7 1,00 For what purpose required : for the rehabilitation of displaced per sons. Note : A copy of the site plan may be inspected at the office of the Collector, Jaunpur." Subsequent to that notification, the Land Acquisition Officer deter mined the amount of compensation for the land and shops to be acquired at a little over rupees forty one thousand. The balance of the amount to be paid as compensation was thereafter deposited by the society. ' / ( • On April 10, 1970 the appellants, claiming to be the owners of a part of the land sought to be acquired, filed petition under article 226 of the Constitution of India in the Allahabad High Court with a prayer for quashing the impugned notification. The notification was assailed on the following three grounds : (1) The notiftcation did not properly specify the lands sought to be acquired; (2) The notification was ultra vires the Act inasmuch as it sought to acquire lands for the rehabilitation of the displaced persons and not tor the rehabilitation of refugees; and (3) The notification was not in accordance with the pro visions of section 7 ( 1) of the Act. N. B. SINGH ~. u. p, STATE (Khauna, J.) 229 The learned signie Judge, while allowing the writ petition, did not A go into the first ground. He, however, accepte~ th~ second and third grounds and in the result quashed the notification. On second ground, the learned Judge referred to the definition in section 2(7) of the Act, according to which refugee means any person who was a resident in any place forming part of Pakistan and wh~, on account of partition of civil disturbances or the fear of such distur bance, has on or after the first day of March 194 7 migrated to any B It was observed place in the U.P. and has been since residing there. that there was nothing to show that the displaced persons for whose benefit the land in question was being acquired had settled in Uttar Pradesh. Regarding the third ground, the learned Judge expressed the view that the notification under section 7 ( 1) of the Act required that the State Government should indicate in the notification that it had decided to acquire the land. As the word "decided" was not C mentioned in the notification, the notification was held to be not accordance with law. On appeal, the Division Bench of the High Court disagreed with the learned single Judge on both the grounds on It was held that the notifi which he had quashed the notification. cation was substantially in ·accordance with section 7 ( 1) of the Act. It was further observed that the society for whose benefit the first D was being acqqired consisted of refugees. Dealing with the ground, namely, that the notification was vague as it did not properly specify the land sought to be acquired, the Division Bench held that all the necessary particulars in respect of the land sought to be acquired had been given. In the result, the appeal was allowed and the writ petition was dismissed. In appeal before us, Mr. Desai has assailed the decision of the E Division Bench on all the three grounds and has urged that the im pugned notification is liable to be quashed on each· of those grounds. We shall accordingly deal with those grounds. So far as th~· ground is concerned that the persons for whose reha bilitation the land is sought to be acquired are not refugees, Mr. Desai could not in spite of our query refer us to any paragraph in the All the writ petition wherein the above ground had been taken. same,. he submitted that as the question had been allowed to be agitat- ed before the High Court, we should not debar the appellants advancing arguments on that score. The submission made by learned counsel in this behalf is that there is nothing to show that the persons for whose benefit the land is being acquired arc settled In this respect wc are of the view that the question Uttar Pradesh. as to whether those persons are settled in U ttar Pradesh or not In the absence of any averment in the writ essentially one of fact. petition that the person concerned were not settled in Uttar Pradesh, it is obvious that the material facts having bearing on this point could not be brought on record. A party seeking to challenge the validity of a notification on a ground involving questions of fact should make necessary averments of fact before it can assail the notification on that ground. As such we find it difficult to sustain the contention of Mr. Desai that the persons for whose benefit the land is being acquired were not settled in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from that, we find that F G H I A B c D E F G H 230 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1977] 2 S.C.R. ground No. 13 taken in the writ petition proceeds upon the assump tion that the persons for whose benefit the land was being acquired were in fact refugees. Division Bench that there was hardly any dispute before the Division Bench on the point that the respondent society, namely, Sufferers' Co-operative Housing Society, consists of refugees and has refugees as its members. It forther appears from the judgment of Coming to the second ground taken by the appellants that notification was not in conformity with section 7 (1) of the Act in asmuch as it did not state that the State Government had decided to acquire the land in dispute, we are of the opinion that a reading of the notification \Vhich has been reproduced above leaves no manner of doubt that the State Government had decided to acquir~ the land. It i!> stated in the notification that the Governor of Uttar Prade~h is pleased to declare that he is satisfied that the land mentioned in the schedule is needed and is suitable for the erection of houses, shops and workshops for the rehabilitation of displaced persons and/ or for the provision of amenities directly connected therewith. The notifi cation further proceeds to state that the land in question shall be deemed to have been acquired permanently and shall vest absolutely in the State Government free from all encumbrances from the date of the notification. The recital in the earlier part of the notification as well as the operative part of the notification that the land shall be deemed to have been acquired permanently and shall vest in State Government lend clear support for the conclusion that the State Government decJded to acquire the land and the order of acquisition was merely an implementation of that decision. The fact that the word "decided" has not been used in the notification would prove fatal when the entire tenor of the notification reveals the deci sion of the State Government to acquire the land and is consistent only with the hypothesis of such a decision having been arrived at. The courts should be averse to strike down a notification for acquisi tion of land on fanciful grounds based on hypertechnicality. What is needed is substantial compliance with law. The impugned notifi cation, in our opinion, clearly satisfies that requirement. Lastly, we may deal with the contention advanced on behalf of the appellants that the notification in question is vague. It is pointed out by Mr. Desai that the total area of the land comprised in field numbers mentionad in the notification is 1.26 acres, while the actual area which is sought to be acquired is one acre. The learned coun sel accordingly< urges that it is not possible to find out tho particular portions of those fields which are sought to be acquired. As such. the notification is stated to be vague and thus not in conformity with law. Our attention has also been invited by Mr. Desaid to the report dated June 23, 1971 of the Tehsildar, who was deputed to deliver possession of the acquired land to the sor.1iety. In the said report the Tehsildar stated that he found it difficult to find out as to which part of the fields mentioned in1 the notification were acquired. In this respect we find that the report of the Tehsilder itself indicates that when he went to the spot to deliver possession of the acquired I N. D. SJ);GH v. u. P. STATE (Khanna, J.) 231 ]and, he did not take with him the correct plan of the said land. The impugned notification makes an express reference to the site-plan. An affidavitj has been filed on behalf of the society and that affidaV:it makes it plain that the area of the land which has been acquired comes to exactly one acre. There appears to be no cogent ground fere with the finding of the Division Bench of the High Court the impugned .notification has not been shown. to be vague. We, therefore, find no infirmity in the impugned notification. The appe_al fails and is dismissed but in the circumstances with no order as to costs. The case, Before we conclude. we \vould like to observe that the case before us tells a sad tale of d~lays in a matter which on sheer humanitarian grounds; needed to be attended to with expedition. would appear from the. above, pertains to the acquisition of land with a view to rehabilitate refugees who were uprooted from their hearths and homes in areas now in Pakistan because of disturbances anJ fear of disturbances which marred the partition of the counti:y. The refugees for this purpose formed a society, and applied to the adminis tration in 1955 for acquisition of land so that they could erect shops and workshops on that land with a view to earn their livelihood. It took the administration 11 years thereafter to issue necessary noti fication for the acquisition of the land in dispute. Four years were thereafter spent because possession of the land could not be delivered. The only attempt made to deliver possession proved infructuous as the From 1970 Tehsildar entrusted with this task took a wrong plan. till today the delivery of possession remained stayed because of the writ proceedings initiated by the appellants. ' One can only hope that now that the final curtain has been dropped, the matter would be .attended to with the necessary promptitude. A B c D E j lP.H.P. Appeal dismissed.