M. Maniklal v. The State of Mysore

KRISHNA IYER, J. Two short legal issues-both apparently devoid of merit-were urged unsuccessfully before the High Court and repeat-ed, with a somewhat similar fate, before us, if we may anticipate our conclusion. A Judgment of affirmation may usefully be an abbrevia-tion and so, we shall briefly deal with Shri Gupte's twin submissions on behalf of the appellant writ petitioner. The appeal is by special leave and the subject-matter is land compulsorily acquired under the City of Bangalore Improvement Act 1945 (for short the Improve-ment Act) (Mysore Act V of 1945).

A concise narration of the necessary facts may con~·eniently be compressed into a paragraph or two.. The appellant purchased two portions of S. No. 211 within the District of Bangalore from twn persons Giliteppa and Nanjappa during the pendency of land acq?isi-tion proceedings under the Improvement Act. These ?roceedmgs were for acquisition of land in S. No. 211 for making a lay-out plan for a building colony. This limited objective was completed after due formalities were complied with and thereafter the land was made over to the Housing Board whose statutory responsibility is to implement housing schemes. We are told that houses have been built on the land already althougfi there is some doubt as to whether 5 acres out of the total extent still remain vacant. If the contentions of the appel-lant are sound the whole scheme wiH be shot down, ·a disaster a socially conscious court should try to avert unless compelled by funda-mental leg<tl ·laws.

What, then, are the alleged vital weaknesses in the acquisition pro-ceedings which vitiate them altogether ? Firstly, a technicality techni-caJly countered; and secondly, a compassionate consideration which has no invalid a tory effect.

The appellant has urged before us that Section 16(2) of the Im-provement Act has a mandatory requirement that service of notices shall be effected on "every person whose name appears in the .... . . . . . . . . in the land revenue register as being primarily liable to pay the property tax or land revenue assessment on ........ land which it is proposed to acquire in executing the scheme .......... " This peremptory mandate has not been complied with and that is the first vital flaw pressed before us. The second contention is based upon Section 15 ( 3) of the Improvement Act whereunder every improvement schem~ "may provide for the construction of buildin~ for the accom-modation of the poorer and working classes, including the whole or part of such classes to be displaced in the execution of the scheme." 'J'.his provision, it i~ argn~, olothes the appellant, in his capacity as a displaced person with a nght to allotment of land for construction of a building for his own residence. We will presently consider these two submissions seria~im.

To make short work of the first point we may straightway state that the obligation under section 16(2) is to serve notices on persons 'Yhose names appear in the land revenue register as being primarily liable to pay the land revenue assessment. The complaint made is that the predecessors of the appellant Giliteppa and Nanjappa were

M. MANIKLAL v. MYSORE (Krishna Iyer, !.) 167 entitled to notice under this provision and that they had not bee~ so given. Of course, there is no affidavit from these two vendors of the appellant that they have not received any notice. Apart from that the burden is on the appellant to prove that his vendors were persons whose names were borne on the land revenue register. This is a question of fact but the moot point debated before the High Court was "Yhat in law was the land revenue register. Certainly notice has been given to Khatedars. The return of the respondents states that "notified Khatedars were notified of the acquisition". Ex. R-1 produced along-with the return shows one Somayaji as the Khatedar, not the vendors of the appellant. This disputed point was investigated by the High Court with a thoroughness and intimate acquaintadce with the local revenue laws which elicits our appreciation. Considering the docu-mentary evidence adduced and the authoritative revenue laws bear-ing on the subject and scanning the meaning of the entries in the extracts befor;; Court, the learned Judges reached the conclusion that the Khatta produced by the appellant was "a mere tentative compila-tion of information transmitted to the Revenue Department by the lnams Abolition Department" and not "Khetwar Patrak" which was the land revenue register within the meaning of section 16(2) of the Improvement Act. The High Co\irt concluded :

"We are of the opinion that the land revenue register to which section 16(2) refers is no other than the register of lands the Khetwar Patrak, and, that register is not the Khatta which is something very different."

Further, on, after full discussion the Court crystallized its conclusions thus : ·

"Even though a person 1i1ay be an occupant in the sense in which that word has to be understood, so long.as it is not proved that his name appears in the land revenue register, at the material point of time, we should not pt'onounce against the validity of the. acquisition or the publication of a decla-ration under section 18 on the slender foundation of insuffi-- cient material such as the certified· copy of a tentative Kha ta which we have referred."

Indeed, the appellant produced some wrong documents but the Court was too cute to be misled as is. evident from its observation :

"It emerges from the discussion so far made that that land revenue register is no other than the register of lands or the Khetwar Patrak which has· to be maintained in form No. 1 which is set out in volume 2 of the Mysore Village Manual at page 8(a), and, we do not have before us either t~at register of lands or a certified copy of it and no explana-tion has been offered to us as to why the petitioner did not obtain a copy of that register or produce it."

J'\fter hearing Shri Gup.te at ~ome .length we are not disposed to be dislodged from the findmg pamstakmgly recorded by the High Court. The first point, therefore, fails.

The only other point seriously pressed before us by Shri Gupte is that under section 15 (3) there is an obligation on the part of the Board of Trustees to provide a plot to the displaced appeUant. There is nothing in Section 15(3) of the Improvement Act which warrants such a compulsive duty or creates a right to claim a plot. Of course, the Board may consider providing some land for the persons from whom acquisitions have been made. This is a beneficient considern-· tion, not a necessary obligation. That this, is so clear also from the rules for the allotment of sites. Rule 10 settles the principle for selection of applicants for allotment of sites. RuJe 10( 1) reads : • "10. Principles for selection of applicants for allotme11t of sites.-( 1) The Board shall consider the case of each applicant on its merits and shall have regard to the following principles in making selection and fixing the priority for aHotment :-

(i) applicants whose lands or houses have been icquirecf

by the Board provided they are otherwise qualified for allotment;

(ii) the status of the applicant, that is, whether he is

married or single and has dependent children;

(iii) the income of the applicant and his capacity to pur-

chase a site and build a house thereon for his resi-dence;

(iv) the number of years the applicant has been waiting

for allotment of a site and the fact that he did not secure a site earlier though he is eligible and had applied for a site."

The facts before us are that the lands acquired have afready beeir transferred to the Housing Board and houses have already been built" at least on a substantial part of the land. All that we can say, at this stage, is that having regard to the compassionate factor that the appellant's lands have been acquired and he has perhaps been dis-placed from the entirety of bis building sites, it should be a fair gesture on the part of the Housing Board if there are vacant lands still avail-able-the order of stay granted by this Court is strongly suggestive of some land being still available as not built upori-to consider the claim of the appellant, if he applies within three months from today for allotment of a site for a house, subject, of course, to his eligibility for allotment arid other criteria for comparative evaluation of claims prescribed by the rules in this behalf. It follows that beyond this is not for the Court to direct and less than this is not fair play to the appellant.

The High CCIUrt had gone into the question of delay disentitling the appellant in maintaining his writ petition. In the view that we have already taken on the merits of the substantive points, we are not called upon to consider the deadly effect of the delay such as there is between the dates of the acquisition notification and the institution of the writ petition. The appeal is dismissed but having consideration for the conspectus of circumstances present in this case we d,irect that the parties will bear' their own costs throughout. .

CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Civil Appeal No. 1948 of 1968. Appeal from the Judgment and Order dated the 21st Sept., 1967 L1f the Mysore High Court in W.P. No. 1168/65.

S. V, Gupte with S. S. Javali and B. Dutta for the appellant. N. Nettar and K. R. Nagaraja, for respondents.