PROTIK PRAKASH BANERJEE,J. - (1.) These two petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India not only raise common questions of law and fact, but are also interconnected. The writ petitioners in the two cases are co-owners who claim title under deeds of sale which have been executed and registered in their joint names by the respective vendors. In fact, on several occasions either matter has been mentioned for being taken up with the other matter before the two single benches which take up matters here. These matters have, at the instance of the parties, thereafter been listed before the same court, on August 9, 2018. I have, therefore, in the interests of justice, chosen to consolidate the two writ petitions and hear them analogously and decide them by a common judgment and order.
(2.) The writ petitioners have in their respective petitions made out identical cases of arbitrary action by "State" within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution of India. According to the writ petitioners, they are joint owners of specified properties which they claim to have purchased jointly under the sale deeds from the respective vendors, whose details are given in paragraph 3 of both the writ petitions. It is their further case that though they purchased these properties in 2008, because they are residents of Hyderabad on the mainland, they did not get around to applying for its mutation until 2015. However, the original respondents (nos. 1 and 2) have illegally used portions of these lands thus acquired by the writ petitioners, without lawfully acquiring them, or paying the writ petitioners any compensation or giving them alternative land (or rehabilitation) whether under Act I of 1894 or otherwise, and the original respondents are using portions of the said lands for laying underground cables for electricity and have deprived the petitioners of the use and enjoyment of the said lands and/or have diminished the value of the said lands. They sought compensation or alternative land, but they did not get either.
(3.) This simple case would have been sufficient for the writ petitioners to have obtained judgment, had there not been the rather inconvenient affidavits-in-opposition. In each writ petition the respondents no.1 and 2 have used one Affidavit-in-Opposition. In each of the writ petitions, the daughter of one of the purported vendors - M.C. John in WP No. 002 of 2016 and T. Joseph in WP No. 004 of 2016 - has applied for addition of party/intervention, and on the same being allowed, has used an Affidavit in Opposition as an added respondent. The respective writ petitioner has used what he has called an Affidavit-in-Reply to all the Affidavits in Opposition.;