DELHI ADMINISTRATION Vs. GURDIP SINGH UBAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) These two Civil Appeals have been filed by the Delhi Administration against the judgment of the Delhi High Court in C.W.P. No. 920 of 1986 dated 17-12-1996. The respondents are the owners of an extent of about 2.50 acres in Chattrapur village. The notifications, in fact, covered land of an extent of about 50,000 Bighas in thirteen villages. The writ petition was allowed under the impugned judgment and the notifications were quashed. The brief facts of the case are follows: The Notification under S. 4(1) of the Land Acquisition Act was issued on 25-11-1980 while the declaration under S. 6 was published on 7-6-1985. Initially, the declaration under S. 6 was challenged in C.W.P. No. 1639 of 1985 and 76 other writ petitions and were referred to a Full Bench of the Delhi High Court on a certain legal issue. The Full Bench decided the point and upheld the S. 6 declaration. The contention before the Full Bench was that the declaration under S. 6 was issued more than 3 years after the S. 4(1) notification and was, therefore, bad in law. The submission was that even though there were various stay orders in several writ petitions by the High Court in relation to the operation of the S. 6 declaration, they were all individual orders passed in the cases of various writ petitioners and hence these orders could not be treated as amounting to a suspension of the entire S. 6 declaration and hence the said declaration must be struck down as time barred in respect of others who did not obtain stay orders. The Full Bench of the High Court rejected the above contention holding that the scheme for which the land was acquired was an integrated one and the stay orders even if obtained in individual cases necessarily resulted in precluding any further proceedings being taken under the S. 6 declaration. Excluding the time covered by the stay orders, the S. 6 declaration must, it was held, be deemed to have been issed in time. On that reasoning, the notification under S. 4(1) and S. 6 were declared valid by the Full Bench. The other points raised by individual writ petitioners, namely that the inquiry under S. 5A was vitiated etc., were not decided by the Full Bench and for that purpose the matters were sent back to a Division Bench. The judgment of the Full Bench dated 25-7-87 is reported in Balak Ram Gupta v. Union of India, AIR 1987 Delhi 239. Thereafter, the 73 matters were listed before a Divion Bench which finally disposed of the writ petitions by a separate judgment reported as B. R. Gupta v. Union of India on 18-11-1988, (1989) 37 Delhi LT 150. The Writ petions were allowed and the S. 6 declaration was quashed on the ground that the S. 5A inquiry was vitiated etc. (There is dispute as to whether the declaration was wholly quashed). The said judgment was not appealed against by the Delhi Administration. The present writ petition was filed on 23-4-1986 for quashing the same notification dated 25-11-1980 and 7-6-1985 issued under Ss. 4(1) and 6. It related to Khasra Nos. 704/1, 706/2, 706/3, 707/2, 714, 715/2, 909/2, 10/2 and 693.

(3.) When the present writ petition came up for hearing before a Division Bench on 17-12-1996, the writ petitioners contended that by the judgment of the Division Bench rendered in B. R. Gupta dated 18-11-88 - i.e. after the Full Bench judgment dated 25-7-87 - the entire S. 6 declaration stood quashed and that even though these writ petitioners (respondents in these Civil Appeals) had not filed any objections under S. 5A of the Act, they were entitled to rely upon the earlier Division Bench judgment of 18-11-88 and contend that the entire S. 6 declaration was quashed. This contention was accepted by the Division Bench under the impugned judgment dated 17-12-1996. The Division Bench held that the earlier judgment resulted in the entirety of the S. 6 declaration being quashed and was a judgment in rem and hence the writ petitioners could rely on that judgment even though they had not filed any objections under S. 5A. The result, according to the appellants, of S. 6 declaration being quashed would be that the S. 4(1) notification would also lapse. It is against the above judgment that the Delhi Administration has preferred these appeals.