- (1.) THE petitioner IOC has approached this Court primarily with a grievance that there are certain establishments which have mushroomed outside the boundaries of IOC premises situated at Baroda. The case of the petitioner is that a warning was sounded to it by Intelligence Bureau(IB for short) indicating a certain threat perception on account of presence of certain establishments.
(2.) IT is not in dispute that IOC is not the owner of the land in the periphery of its establishment situated at Baroda. A somewhat frequent situation therefore, arose as to how to take care of the security concern of the IOC as well as to balance the right of citizens who may be occupying certain area at the site. My predecessor therefore, by a detailed order dated 14.8.2007 primarily made following observations: "11. In this set of facts and circumstances, if petitioner applies for land acquisition under Section 3 of the Land Acquisition Act for the property in question, the same will be considered by the State Government as expeditiously as possible, keeping in mind the urgency clause referred to in Section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act. Repeated, alarming reports given by Intelligence Bureau cannot be ignored by State Government. The order passed by the Trial Court can also not be ignored by the Government. It also appears from the facts as stated by the counsel for the parties, that now the movement is going on with the Government about the regularization of the construction. Ordinary regularization of the encroachment upon government land and the encroachment near the oil refinery premises of the petitioner in view of the aforesaid alarming and awakening reports by Intelligence Bureau and order passed by the Trial Court ought to be viewed and evaluated differently by the State Government. 13. In light of the aforesaid facts, the present petitioner may prefer an application for acquisition of the land in question under the Land Acquisition Act and as and when such application is preferred, the same will be considered as expeditiously as possible by the respondent State, looking to Intelligence Bureau reports and order passed by the Trial Court."
(3.) IT can thus be seen that majority of the work was already done by my learned predecessor and the culmination thereof was the observations made in the above -mentioned paragraph which are reproduced in this order. Having heard the learned advocates appearing for the parties, I find that the petition can be disposed of by making the said observations and directions final though they were earlier made by way of interim order.;