Allahabad High Court: This petition was filed by petitioners before the Division Bench of Pankaj Kumar Jaiswal and Dr Yogendra Kumar Srivastava, JJ. praying for a direction to the respondent to decide the application of petitioner filed under Section 28-A of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and to re-determine compensation sought to be given to the petitioner.
Facts of the case were such that a notification was issued under Section 4(1) of the Act, 1894 where an award was passed by the Special Land Acquisition Officer, Ghaziabad in respect of certain land parcels. Petitioner did not challenge the aforementioned award under Section 18 of the Act but the same was challenged by other persons which gave rise to land acquisition references decided by District Judge thereby re-determining the compensation amount. It was against this judgment that the first appeal was filed which was decided with the re-determined compensation amount. Under the decision in the first appeal, the petitioner filed an application under Section 28-A of the Act to claim the benefit of the re-determined compensation. This application was rejected.
The question before Court was to decide if the application was time-barred under Section 28-A of the Act which mentioned about re-determination of the amount of compensation on the basis of the award of the Court within 3 months of its decision. Thereby leading to the second question from which Court’s decision the time period was to be calculated i.e. Reference Court or High Court first appeal.
Krishna Mishra, learned counsel on behalf of petitioners, submitted that the time period for claiming the benefit of re-determined compensation amount was to begin after the decision in the first appeal and since their application was within that time period the application was validly made. Suresh Singh learned Addl. Chief Standing Counsel appearing on behalf of State respondents, submitted that the limitation period to file application was to be taken from the date of the award made by Reference Court which means that petitioner’s application was time-barred.
Under the Act, Court was defined to mean a principal Civil Court of original jurisdiction. Catena of cases were referred to concluding that limitation period should be computed from the date of award of Reference Court on basis of which re-determination was sought and not from the appeal which was filed against the award. Accordingly, the application thus filed was beyond the time period of 3 months if computed from the award of Reference Court. Further, proviso of the Section did not state any other reason for the extension of the time period than to obtain a copy of award.
High Court on the discussion above was of the view that petitioners could not have claimed the benefit of re-determined compensation as their application was time-barred. The application was to be filed within 3 months of the award passed by Reference Court and not after the decision of High Court in first appeal. Therefore, this petition was dismissed. [Tejpal Singh v. State of U.P., Writ C No. 7218 of 2019, Order dated 08-03-2019]
