State Of Punjab VS. Mst. Qaisar Jehan Begum And Anr.

Summary

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On October 25,1953, the Collector made an award in respect of land belonging to the respondents, who were evacuees, in the District of Gurgaon. The respondents were not notified about the acquisition and they were not present at the time of the award.

The respondents filed an application before the Collector stating that they came to know of the contents of the Award only on July 22, 1955 when they received the compensation amount and that the amount of Rs. 96 pet acre as given in the Award was too low and that the market value of the land was about Rs. 600/- per acre. The Collector accepted the application and referred the matter under s. 18 of the Land Acquisition Act, to the Senior Subordinate judge, Gurgaon.

The Senior Subordinate judge held that the application for a reference which was made on September 30, 1955, was filed beyond the period of limitation prescribed by s. 18 and dis- charged the reference. The matter was taken to the High Court in revision by the respondents and the High Court accepted the revision petition and directed the Subordinate judge to deal with the reference on merits, on the view that the civil court was preclued from going into questions other than the matters specified in s. 18 of the Act. The High Court did not go into the correctness of the decision on merits on the question of limitation. On appeal by special leave.

Held, assuming that the civil court could go into the question of limitation, the respondents who were entitled to notice under s. 12, sub-s. 2, of the Act had admittedly received no notice nor were they present at the time when the Award was made and therefore neither cl. (a) nor the first part of cl. (b) of the proviso to s. 18 applied.

The scheme of the Act requires that before applying for reference under s. 18, the parties concerned must have know- ledge of the essential contents of the award and in the present 972

case the petitioners though they had come to know of the award earlier did not know the essential contents of the award till July 22, 1955, therefore, the period of six months contemplated in the second part of cl. (b) of s. 18 would commence from that date and the application for reference was within time.

Raja Harish Chandra Raj Singh v. The Deputy Land Acquisition Officer, [1962] 1 S. C. R. 676, relied on.

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Extract

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State Of Punjab VS. Mst. Qaisar Jehan Begum And Anr.

PETITIONER: STATE OF PUNJAB Vs.

RESPONDENT: MST. QAISAR JEHAN BEGUM AND ANR.

DATE OF JUDGMENT: 11/02/1963

BENCH: DAS, S.K.

BENCH: DAS, S.K.

SARKAR, A.K.

AYYANGAR, N. RAJAGOPALA

CITATION: 1963 AIR 1604 1964 SCR (1) 971

CITATOR INFO : RF 1979 SC 404 (10)

ACT: Limitation-Land Acquisition Act, (1 of 1894), s. 18.

JUDGMENT: CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No. 592 of 1961.

Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated November 16, 1959, of the Punjab High Court at Chandigarh in Civil Revision No. 268 of 1958.

R. Ganapathy Iyer and R. N. Sachthey, for the appellant.

S. P. Sinha and Saukat Hussain, for respondent No. 2.

1963. February 11. The judgment of the Court was delivered by S. K. DAS, J.-T...

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