M.R. Sharma, J. - (1.) THE Petitioners are landowners of village Tung Pain, which lies within the municipal limits of Amritsar. Their agricultural land and their houses standing upon that land, were brought under a scheme envisaged by Section 24 read with Section 28(2) of the Punjab Town Improvement Act, 1922 (hereinafter referred to as the Act). In the petition as originally filed, it was alleged that provisions of Section 36 of the Act had not been complied with. In other words, boundaries of the locality comprised in the scheme had not been indicated nor had the requisite notices under that section been published. On 18th October, 1973, this case came up for hearing before me and on an oral prayer made by the learned Counsel for the Petitioners, I allowed him to amend the petition by raising additional plea that notification under Section 42 of the Act could not have been issued after a period of three years from the date when notification under Section 36 of the Act had been issued.
(2.) IN the return to the original petition filed on behalf of the Trust, Respondent No. 2, it was asserted that the scheme had been duly published under Section 36 of the Act by inserting citations in the press and the official gazette. Notice in this behalf was published for three consecutive weeks in the official gazettes, dated 8th April, 1960, 15th April, 1960 and 22nd April, 1960. Since many of the Petitioners were not shown as owners of the property coming under the scheme, notices could not be issued to them. In reply to the amended petition, additional grounds have been taken. It has been stated that all the Petitioners except Jhanda Singh, Petitioner No. 11, had filed petitions for getting references made to the Land Acquisition Tribunal for the enhancement of the compensation awarded to them. By so doing the Petitioners had accepted the acquisition as good and binding and were now estopped from challenging the same in this petition. The other ground taken was that the Respondent No. 2 had already paid about Rs. 41,282 to the Land Acquisition Collector for payment to those persons whose land had been acquired along with that of the Petitioners. The impugned scheme had progressed sufficiently involving a lot of expenditure and labour. The work of construction and roads, drains and laying of water supply lines, had consumed over Rs. 2,00,000. Similarly more than Rs. 4,00,000 had been spent on filling up the low -lying land. After this a number of builing plans had been sanctioned in the areas coming under the present scheme after the owners of such areas had paid development charges to the Trust, The sum and substance of these objections is that the notification under Section 36 of the Act having been published on 3rd April, 1960 and Respondent No. 2 having incurred a lot of expenditure in the execution of the scheme, the same should not be allowed to be challenged by this petition which was filed on 27th April, 1970. The other objection which Mr. Gujral, learned Counsel, developed at the time of arguments, was that since I allowed the amendment of this petition on 18th October, 1973, these objections should not be deemed to have been raised on that date.
(3.) NOW it cannot be disputed that notification under Section 42 of the Act was published in the official Gazette on 24th October, 1969, namely, after more than 9 1/2 years of the publication of the -notification under Section 36 of the Act. In Harbans Kaur and Ors. v. Ludhiana Improvement Trust Ludhiana and Ors., 1973 P.L.R. 511 a Full Bench of this Court has held that notification under Section 42 of the Act corresponds to a notification under Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act and such a notification, if published, after a period of two years from the date of coming into force of the Land Acquisition (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance, 1967, would not be in accordance with law. I am bound to follow this judgment with respect. Consequently, it must be held that notification under Section 42 of the Act published in this case on 24th October, 1969, is illegal and does not legally vest the property in Respondent No. 2.;