HAJI MOHD AKRAM Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioners are residents of Village Ashmuji Gandgund Kulgam, District Anantnag of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. They have filed this petition to seek quashing of Collector Land Acquisition Kulgams Notification No. 1258 -53/Collector.L.Acq dated 28 -12 -2004 and a restraint command to the respondents not to dispossess them from their immovable properties i.e. lands and houses.

(2.) THE petitioners have questioned Collectors Notification under section 4 of the State Land Acquisition Act, 1990 on the ground that the Collector had failed to publish it in the Government Gazette as mandatorily required under section 4 (b) of the Act. They say that there was no necessity of acquiring their lands as a road could well be laid on the existing alignment of a parallel road leading from Quinmoh to Kulgam where the State Government, through its Rural Development Department, had constructed small bridges/culverts. They say that the existing road constructed by Rural Development Department was most suitable for being used as a full -fledged road.

(3.) THE petitioners case is that few persons of the area, whose lands/orchards were situated along a foot -path which had been used by the inhabitants of the area to reach their lands and houses, were members of Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI (M), for short and wielded considerable influence on the bureaucracy and the CPI (M) (MLA) Mr. M.Y. Tarigami. They wanted a motorable road as access to their orchards and had manipulated the issuance of the Notification impugned in the writ petition. They thus questioned the notification as a malafide exercise by the Collector at the behest of Mr. Tarigami.