Raghava Rao, J. - (1.) Out of the four civil miscellaneous appeals posted before us, the only one. that requires consideration is C. M. A. no. 212 of 1946 which arises out of O. P. No. 49 of 1944. The O. P. in question along with others which we are not called upon to consider was one presented to the District Judge, West Godavari appointed as an arbitrator by the Government of India under the Defence of India Act. The substance of the petition which resulted in the ad-indication of the arbitrator, which is the subject-matter of challenge in this appeal, is that the lands belonging to the petitioner which had been originally requisitioned by the Government temporarily under the Defence of India Act Rules were proposed to be acquired permanently later by the Government and that the compensation offered for the proposed acquisition is inadequate. For the purpose of fixing the value of the property sought to be acquired, the arbitrator was appointed on the reference of the matter to the Government of India. The arbitrator has awarded with reference to two survey numbers comprised in the O. P., namely, S. Nos. 80 and 81/1, compensation at the rate of Rs. 100 per acre, and with reference to the other survey numbers comprised in the O. P., compensation at the rate of Rs. 175 per acre. It is against this award of compensation that the petition has come up in this Court in the civil miscellaneous appeal, which we are now considering.
(2.) It is obvious that with an award of this character we should not be justified in interfering except it be on the basis of a demonstrated error of principle. In the course of the argument which was advanced to us by the learned counsel for the appellant we have been told that the proceedings prior to the appointment of arbitrator suffer from an infirmity of principle, and that is because the actual notices that his client) got from the Collector with reference to the offer of compensation were coupled with a direction that the District Judge of West Godavari might be moved in the matter and no indication was given by the notices servel upon his client about the details of the way in which the actual valuation was fixed by the Collector before he made the offer. It has also been contended before us as the second point of principle arising out of the proceedings that the particular report of the Collector which was sent up by him to the arbitrator was one on which the arbitrator relied but to which the appellant before us had no access. The last argument advanced to us was that the actual materials supplied to the arbitrator at the trial were not such as would justify the conclusion reached by him.
(3.) We may at once state that we find absolutely no substance in the kind of complaint sought to be made by the learned counsel for the appellant with reference to the procedure adopted by the Collector before he made the reference to the arbitrator or with reference to the actual procedure adopted by the arbitrator himself after the matter went up to him. We ate satisfied that although the notices served upon the appellant were with reference to the actual amount offered by the Collector, when the matter came up to the arbitrator, the appellant was sufficiently alive to the actual kind of material that he had to place before the arbitrator in order to successfully question the figure that the Collector had offered. It is said by Mr. Venugopalachari, the learned counsel for the appellant, that at no stage prior to the pronouncement of the award of the arbitrator did his client have any opportunity to acquaint himself with the actual details of the offer contained in the reports submitted by the Collector later on to the arbitrator, and it is, therefore, urged by the learned counsel that his client was under a handicap in the sense that he could not sufficiently adduce evidence in rebuttal of the basis on which the Collector had proceeded. We are not satisfied, however, that the actual process of trial suffered in any serious or substantial manner by the failure of Government to produce or to exhibit at the trial the report of the Collector. The arbitrator appointed has considered the whole matter on the basis of the evidence available before him in a very careful manner, and we have no doubt that if only the appellant before us had been very serious to ask for the contents of the report he would have been given ample access to it before the trial of the case by the arbitrator.;