Court No. - 40
Case :- WRIT - C No. - 18798 of 2021 Petitioner :- Ajay Pratap Singh And 2 Others Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 5 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- H.K Asthana,Sanjay Mani Tripathi Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Sudhir Bharti
Hon'ble Manoj Misra,J. Hon'ble Jayant Banerji,J.
Heard learned counsel for the petitioners; the learned Standing Counsel for the State and perused the record.
This petition has been filed with the following prayer:
"I. Issue a writ, order or direction in the nature of Mandamus commanding the concerned respondents-
-either to provide land to the petitioners in exchange of their own Bhumidhari land of Gata No.- 1482 (area 0.0160 hectare), situate in the Village- Bharsar, Tehsil- Kaptanganj, District- Kushinagar, on which Gram Panchayat Bhawan is illegally constructed in the year 1961;
- or to provide compensation to the petitioners in respect of their share in the said land in accordance with Central Act No. 30 of 2013;
- as well as damages for unauthorised use of their aforesaid Bhumidhari Land w.e.f. 1961 till date when actual payment of the same will be made by the concerned respondents;
II. Issue a writ, order or direction in the nature of Mandamus commanding the District Magistrate, Kushinagar (Respondent No.- 2) & the Additional District Magistrate (Finance and Revenue), Kushinagar, the Chairman of the District Level Committee for Redressal of Public Grievances Regarding Land Compensation (Respondent No.- 3) to decide the petitioners' representation/complaint dated 09.11.2020 (Annexure No.- 8), made in the said respect, in accordance with Hon'ble Court thinks suitable to fix in the interest of justice."
It appears from the record that the petitioners along with other co-tenure holders claim to be bhumidhar with transferable rights of plot no. 1482 (admeasuring area 0.0160 hectare) situate in Village Bharsar Khas, Tehsil Kaptanganj, District Kushinagar and the khatauni of fasli year 1423-1428 has been enclosed.
The allegation is that the aforesaid plot no. 1482 of the petitioners has been illegally acquired by the respondents without following the acquisition procedure, and, without giving compensation, a gram panchayat bhawan has been constructed over it. It is contended by the learned counsel for the petitioners that information was sought from the Tehsildar/Public Information Officer of Tehsil Kaptanganj, District Kushinagar under Right to Information Act, 2005 which was given on 14.9.2020 and 5.10.2020. It was then that the petitioners came to know that the gram panchayat bhawan has been illegally constructed on the aforesaid plot no. 1482 and, thereafter, a representation dated 5.9.2020 was made to the District Magistrate, Kushinagar as well as to the District Panchayat Raj Officer for providing land to the petitioners in lieu of their own land or to provide compensation in accordance with law. It is stated that the petitioner no. 1 also made a complaint on 4.10.2020 on the web portal of the State Government. It is stated that thereafter various representations were filed before the concerned Authorities. The learned counsel has referred to a report dated 22.10.2020 of the Assistant Development Officer (Panchayat), Tehsil Kaptanganj, District Kushinagar which reveals that the gram panchayat bhawan is made on 16 air land of plot no. 1482 in the year 1960-61. The report further states that since the construction is very old, the records of the same are not available and that there is no provision for providing compensation by the gram panchayat. The learned counsel for the petitioner contends that a Government Order dated 12.5.2016 was issued by the State Government for granting compensation to persons whose land had been occupied and utilized by the State Government without acquisition proceedings or without payment of compensation. It is stated that in view of the aforesaid Government Order dated 12.5.2016, the petitioners submitted a representation/complaint dated 9.11.2020 to the Additional District Magistrate (Finance and Revenue), Kushinagar, who is the Chairman of the District Level Committee for redressal of public grievance relating to land compensation but the same has not been decided till date.
The learned Standing Counsel has opposed the petition on the ground that the construction of the gram panchayat bhawan over the petitioners' land is admittedly of the year 1960-61 and, therefore, the claim of the petitioners is barred by laches.
A perusal of the record shows that all the petitioners are residents of Village- Bharsar, Tehsil- Kaptanganj, District- Kushinagar, which is the very village in which the aforesaid disputed plot no. 1482 is situated. The contention on behalf of the petitioners that they came to know of the alleged wrongful occupation of the aforesaid land and the construction of the panchayat bhawan only after they filed an application under the Right to Information Act in the Tehsil headquarters in the year 2020, is fallacious. Admittedly, a full fledged panchayat bhawan has been constructed over the aforesaid plot no. 1482 way back in the year 1960-61, the petitioners and other co-tenure holders who reside in the same village in which the aforesaid plot no. 1482 is situated cannot be permitted to claim that that they have no knowledge of the construction of the panchayat bhawan on that land. The age of the petitioners does not appear on the record. Only the affidavit filed by the son of the petitioner no. 1, namely, Ashwani Kumar Singh is on record which reflects his age as 24 years. It is unlikely that the petitioners were even born in the year 1960-61. It appears that an ancestor of the petitioners may have given his consent for construction of the panchayat bhawan in larger public interest and now after several decades of the construction of the pachayat bhawan, the petitioners have sought to conjure a cause of action on the basis of an information sought and received from the Tehsil headquarters in the year 2020.
This Court as well as the Supreme Court have deprecated the practice of litigants in setting up highly belated claims for compensation in respect of land contributed by their ancestors for the larger public good. This Court in its judgement dated 26.7.2021 in Ishwar Chand and others Vs. State of U.P. and others1 had an occasion to consider a highly belated claim of the petitioners therein. After considering the decision of the Supreme Court in Syed Maqbool Ali vs. State of U.P.2 , State of Madhya Pradesh vs. Bhailal Bhai and others3, Banda Development Authority, Banda v Moti Lal Agarwal and others4, Union of India and another vs. V.M. Sarkar5 this Court observed that there was nothing on record to demonstrate that the claim of the petitioners was raised or was under consideration from within the period of limitation. There was no admissible material on record to indicate that either within three years or even twelve years of such utilisation of the land any promise was extended by the State or its agencies to compensate the petitioners. This Court in paragraph no. 11 of the judgement held as follows:
“11.................Under these circumstances, where even the remedy to seek possession was barred by limitation, that is on expiry of 12 years from the date the possession of land was taken from the farmers, in our view, the writ petition, filed after 41 years, to stake a claim for compensation is hopelessly barred by laches and is liable to be dismissed as such.”
In the present case, the petitioners have totally failed to demonstrate that they or their ancestors have been agitating their claim before the Authorities concerned after utilization of the aforesaid plot no. 1482 for construction of the panchayat bhawan. After nearly 60 years of the construction of the pachayat bhawan in the same village where the petitioners reside, they have staked their claim to compensation. There is no averment in the petition that 1 Writ-C No. 15641 of 2021 2 (2011) 15 SCC 383 3 AIR 1964 SC 1006 4 (2011) 5 SCC 394 5 2010 (2) SCC 59 any of the petitioners or other co-tenure holders or their ancestors had been promised compensation at the time when the land was utilised for construction of the panchayat bhawan. The observation in Ishwar Chand (supra) may be noticed with profit, which is as follows:
“8. No doubt, the case of the petitioners is that their land was utilised under a promise that they would be paid compensation. But there is nothing on record that any promise was extended by the State or its agencies in respect of payment of compensation either to the petitioners or to their ancestors, though, it is alleged by the petitioners that on their representations, a Committee was set up in the year 2004 to examine their claim. Further, from our query to the learned counsel for the petitioners, it transpires that the petitioners are not those farmers whose land was utilised but are successors in interest of those farmers. Thus, in absence of a specific stand in the petition that any of the petitioners had been promised compensation at the time when the land was utilised for construction of road, it would be any body's guess as to what transpired at the time when the land was utilised for constructing the road. Whether the ancestors of the petitioners voluntarily contributed their land or it was forcible acquisition would be a matter of speculation. But what is clear on the record is that there is no material put forth to suggest that the ancestors of the petitioners had claimed compensation. Whether the ancestors of the petitioners had provided their land voluntarily with a view to have a road for the village and for their benefit or they were forced to provide land for construction of the road cannot be decided by us, at this stage, particularly, because those farmers, namely, ancestors of the petitioners, are no longer alive.”
In view of the above, this petition deserves to be dismissed as the claim raised is barred by laches and is, accordingly, dismissed.
Order Date :- 12.8.2021 A. V. Singh