Satish Chandra, J. - (1.) ON 20th August, 1958, the Sub-Divisional Officer, Bareilly, passed an order, requisitioning 17.2 acres of land in village Karora for re habilitation of persons affected by flood, under Section 3 of the U. P. Acquisition of Property (Flood Relief) Temporary Powers Act, 1948. The appellants were the owners of the land. They subsequently made a re presentation against the requisition. That having evoked no response, they instituted a writ petition in this Court The requisi tion order was challenged on a variety of grounds. The learned Single Judge accepted file plea raised by the appellants that no notice, as required by Section 3 of the Act, had been issued or served on the appellants. Nonetheless, he held that non-service of the notice will not invalidate the requisition as the appellants had knowledge of the requi sition proceedings. The various other points raised in support of the writ petition were also repelled The writ petition was dismis sed.
(2.) IN our opinion, the appeal is en titled to succeed and the order cannot be sustained. Section 3, which authorises the requisition of property, provides:- "3. The procedure of requisition- If in the opinion of the Requisitioning Autho rity it is necessary or expedient so to do for a public purpose, it may, by order, requi sition any land or building material by serv ing on the owner and the person in pos session thereof......... a notice stating that the Requisitioning Authority has decided to requisition such land or building material in pursuance of this section ......... Under this section, requisition can be made by order and by serving the requisite notice on the owner of the property. In our opin ion, the process of requisition, which com mences with the taking of the decision and the passing of an order, 1s not completed till the notice mentioned in the section is served on the owner and the person hi pos session. Till service of such a notice, the matter remains in the stage of an attempt to requisition. Requisition does not, in our opinion, validly take effect without the ser vice of that said notice. Li this view, the service of the notice is integral and neces sary part of the process of acquisition. The Rules framed under this Act lead to the same conclusion. Rule 4 says that when it is decided to requisition _ any land or building material under Section 3 of the Act, the Requisitioning Authority shall issue a notice in Form I to the owner of the land or the building material as the case may be. The use of the word 'shall' in Rule 4 clearly indicates that the service of the notice is mandatory. In ST. Supdt, R. M. S., Cochin v. K. V. Gopinath, Civil Appeal No. 1706 (N) of 1971, decided on 18-2-1972 = (reported in AIR 1972 SC 1487), the Supreme Court interpreted Rule 5 of the Central Service (Temporary Ser vice) Rules, 1955. The proviso to that Rule stated that the services of any such Gov ernment servant may be terminated "forth with by payment" to him of a sum equi valent to the amount of his pay plus allow ances for the period of the notice. The phrase "may be terminated forthwith by payment" was construed to imply that the payment was a condition of the termination of service forthwith. It was held that an order of termination can be upheld, if the requisite amount in terms of the rules was paid into the hands of the employee, Or made available to him, at the same time as he was served with the order. In the pre sent case, the provision requires that requi sition can be made by order and by serv ing the requisite notice on the owner. The two events are the conditions. Without either of them, there is no effective requisi tion.
(3.) THE finding of the learned Single Judge that no notice, as required by Sec tion 3, was either issued or served upon the owners, has not been challenged before us. On that finding, the order of requisition was clearly ineffective and cannot be sustained. Since the appeal is liable to succeed on this point, it is unnecessary to go into the merits of the various other pleas raised by the ap pellants.;