ARUN KUMAR,J. - (1.) LEAVE granted. 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. The subject matter of these appeals is the compulsory acquisition of certain lands belonging to the writ petitioners by the Central Government vide Notification dated 11th June, 1998 under S.3A of the National Highways Act, 1956 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Act'). The writ petitioners challenged the acquisition of their lands on various grounds. The Division Bench of the High Court by its impugned judgment dated 7th April, 2004 disposed of the writ petition holding the impugned Notification regarding compulsory acquisition of land to be bad in law. However, keeping in view the fact that possession of the acquired land had already been taken by the authorities, the High Court felt that no useful purpose would be served by quashing the Notification. The High Court also took note of the power of the acquiring authority to issue a fresh Notification for acquisition of the land which could only lead to possible increase in the amount of compensation payable to the owners. Keeping these aspects in view it ordered that an additional amount of compensation be awarded to the land owners. Accordingly, an additional amount calculated at 30% over and above the compensation already determined was ordered to be paid to the writ petitioners. The Competent authority is aggrieved of the order of the High Court holding the Notification regarding the acquisition of the land to be illegal, while the NHAI is aggrieved of the award of additional 30 per cent amount as compensation to the Writ Petitioners. The owners / writ petitioners are aggrieved of the Notification not being quashed in spite of having been declared as illegal.
(2.) THE acquisition of land in the present case is under the National Highways Act, 1956. The power to acquire land is contained in S.3A of the Act. According to sub -s.(1) where the Central Government is satisfied that for a public purpose, any land is required for the building, maintenance, management or operation of a national highway or part thereof, it may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare its intention to acquire such land. sub -s.(2) provides that every Notification under sub -s.(1) shall give a brief description of the land. Under sub -s.(3) the Competent Authority is required to cause the substance of the notification to be published in two local newspapers, one of which will be in a vernacular language. The impugned notification in this case is challenged on the ground that it does not give a brief description of the land sought to be compulsorily 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. The GAZETTE OF INDIA EXTRAORDINARY (PART II _ SEC. 3 (iii)_ Brief description of land with or without Structure falling within the proposed Right of way in terms of Sub -s.(2) of S.3A of National Highways Laws (Amendment) Act, 1997. As per Appended _ A (No.RW/NH -15013/31/94 -PL.) A.D.NARAIN, Director General(Road Development and Addl. Secy. APPENDIX _ A to NOTIOFICATION No. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PRIVATE LAND WITH/WITHOUT STRUCTURE FALLING WITHIN PROPOSED RIGHT OF WAY OF SECOND VIVEKANANDA BRIDGE and ITS APPROACHES IN NATIONAL HIGHWAY _ 2, WEST BENGAL. (Vide Sub -s.(2) of S.3A of the NH Laws (Amendment) Act, 1997 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 when only a part of the land out of a bigger chunk of land is sought to be acquired. A reference to the Tables forming part of the Appendix, which according to the acquiring Authority contain brief description of the land, will show that under various heads, only part of bigger chunks of land is being acquired. If the entire land falling in a particular survey is acquired, there cannot be any problem of identification of land. But when only a part of land out of larger tract of land is sought to be acquired, the question arises which part is going to be acquired. For instance in the first Table full area of land in Dag No.1448 at Serial No. 3 is 17 acres as per column 5. Column 7 indicates that only a part of the said 17 acres is being acquired and as per Column 8, the part which is sought to be acquired is 2.7800 acres. This means out of 17 acres only 2.7800 acres is being acquired. The question will arise as to which side this part which is sought to be acquired is falling, it could be anywhere on the northern, southern, western, eastern sides or in the centre. How is one to know which part is under acquisition? Similar position emerges with reference to other serial numbers where only part of larger chunks of land is being acquired. Such cases are several when we look at the entire Appendix and the Tables forming part of it. According to the learned counsel for the writ petitioners, the absence of information as to which part of the land is being acquired makes the description insufficient, rather vague. The owners are not in a position to identify the land under acquisition. It also renders it impossible to make claim regarding compensation for the land under acquisition because it is a matter of common knowledge that in bigger tracts of land, certain areas on a particular side are more valuable than the others. The absence of proper description of land makes it impossible to file objection against acquisition. For all these reasons it is argued on behalf of the land owners that the statutory requirement of a brief description of land is not fulfilled. According to the Writ Petitioners non compliance of sub -s.(2) of S.3A renders the Notification invalid and the same is therefore, liable to be quashed.
(3.) THE learned counsel appearing for the Competent Authority as also the counsel for the NHAI have tried to support the Notification. According to them, the requirement in sub -s.(2) of S.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 S.3A(1); (2) Failure to file objections under S.3C within twenty one days as prescribed in sub -s.(1); (3) Applying for compensation for the acquired land giving full details of the lands sought to be acquired which shows that land owners knew all the details about the land under acquisition and the objection regarding absence of proper description of land sought to be acquired in the impugned Notification is not open to them; (4) On failure of the land owners to file objections under S.3C(1), the Competent Authority submitted a report to the Central Government and the Central Government issued a declaration that the land should be acquired for purposes mentioned in sub -s.(1). On publication of this declaration the land vests absolutely in the Central Government free from all encumbrances. As per sub -s.(2) of S.3D, therefore, land having vested in the Central Government the acquisition could not be challenged; (5) The Competent Authority on vesting of the land in the Central Government and on compensation amount being deposited by the Competent Authority, has taken possession of the lands, therefore, the acquisition could not be challenged; (6) Lastly, it was submitted that these acquisitions were for very important public purpose, i.e., construction of National Highway and the court should not interfere with the acquisition on mere technicalities. The land owners only have a right to compensation. The quashing of the Notification would only lead to postponement of the date of Notification thereby possibly resulting in increase in amount of compensation payable to the land owners. Therefore, at best the land owners could be compensated by giving some additional compensation for their acquired land. The acquisition need not be disturbed. ;