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3.1 The respondents, having prepared an integrated infrastructural project consisting of transport corridor, for fast moving traffic while connecting the city area in a circle alongwith a development corridor found necessary for the planned development of the Jaipur City and for the proper functioning of the transport corridor itself, the respondent No.1 had issued the notifications under Section 4 dated 15.7.05 for acquisition of the lands in question for the said integrated project in two phases. The respondent No. 3, Land Acquisition Officer having submitted the reports under Section 5A of the said Act, the respondent No.1 had issued the declarations under Section 6 dated 4.8.06 and 5.8.06, which were published in the official gazette on 18.8.06. The respondent No.3, LAO thereafter had passed villagewise awards which were approved by the State Government in the year 2008 and 2009. 3.2 Most of the petitioners claiming to be the khatedars of their respective agricultural lands, had initially challenged the said land acquisition proceedings by filing the writ petitions being No. 997/06, 800/08, 8827/07, 9063/07, 9227/07, 1394/08, 1396/08 and 2205/08. The said petitions came to be disposed of vide order dated 4.5.11 and 15.2.12 directing the petitioners to make representations before the State Empowered Committee constituted by the Government, and to approach the court if any grievance survived after the decision of the committee. 3.3 It appears that the petitioners through their representatives had made the representations before the said Empowered Committee, however the same came to be rejected by the said Committee. The petitioner Virendra Singh alongwith other petitioners therefore had again filed writ petitions being Nos. SBCWP No. 8200/12, 8149/12, 8198/12 and 8199/12, in which the respondents had raised preliminary objections regarding the maintainability of the writ petitions to the effect that some of the petitions were filed in the name of dead persons, and in other petitions, names of many petitioners were repeated in the cause-title of the same petition or of other petitions. Pending the said four petitions, the petitioner Virendra Singh of the SBCWP No. 9126/14 alongwith other petitioners, filed 34 writ petitions which are listed at Serial Nos. 1 to 34 in the present order. At the relevant time, their being call of strike given by the Bar Association, the petitioner Virendra Singh had remained personally present alongwith other petitioners in the court and had prayed to do the needful. The court without being technical into the matter had permitted the said petitioners to withdraw their earlier set of four petitions, vide the order dated 22.9.14, and pursue their 34 petitions. 3.4 In the said set of 34 petitions, the court after hearing the learned counsels for the parties had declined to grant any interim relief pending the petitions vide the order dated 24.9.14. Being aggrieved by the said order, the SAW being No. 1539/14 was filed before the Division Bench, only in case of SBCWP No. 9126/14. The said appeal came to be allowed by the Division Bench vide the order dated 29.10.14 against which the SLP being No. 31076/14 was filed by the respondents before the Supreme Court. The said SLP came to be disposed of by the Supreme Court vide the order dated 5.1.15 on the ground that the High Court had commenced day-to-day hearing of the main petitions. It appears that the other DB Appeals subsequently filed before the Division Bench against the order dated 24.9.14 also came to be disposed of by the Division Bench in view of the said order passed by the Supreme Court. The petitions at Sr. No. 35 to 86 were subsequently tagged alongwith the said 34 petitions at the request made by the learned counsels for the parties. 3.5 The present batch of eighty six petitions have been filed by the petitioners alleging interalia that the notification under Section 4 was not published in accordance with the provisions of the said Act of 1894 and that there was violation of the principles of natural justice while preparing the reports under Section 5A of the said Act. The petitioners have also alleged that the acquisition proceedings initiated without framing any scheme as contemplated under Section 38 and 39 of the JDA Act were invalid and the purpose for which the lands were sought to be acquired could not be said to be a "public purpose". The petitioners have also alleged that the allotment of 25% developed lands to the khatedars on the basis of the circular dated 27.10.05 issued by the State Government was not in consonance with the provisions of the said Act and therefore was illegal. According to the petitioners, in some of the cases though awards were passed under the Act of 1894, five years or more prior to the commencement of the Act of 2013, the physical possession of the lands was not taken nor the compensation was paid, and hence the acquisition proceedings in respect of such lands have lapsed in view of Section 24(2) of the Act of 2013. 3.6 The petitions have been resisted by the respondents by filing the replies contending interalia that all the mandatory provisions contained in Section 4, 5A and 6 were duly complied with before passing of the Awards. According to the respondents, the petitions were not only barred by the principles of constructive res-judicata but were liable to be rejected on the ground of delay, laches, acquiescence, estoppel and waiver. It has been contended that during the course of acquisition proceedings, most of the persons interested/beneficiaries had surrendered their lands for the project in lieu of the compensation in the form of 25% developed land and the said fact has been mentioned in the awards also. According to the respondents the developed lands to be alloted to such petitioners have already been reserved, and the lottery for specific allotment was also held. The respondents have further stated that out of the total area of 1,578.958 hectares under acquisition for the project, the persons interested had surrendered about 1,047.3073 hectares of land at the time of passing of the awards in the year of 2008 and 2009, and due to the disputes with regard to 78.5593 hectares of land, the references were made to the civil court and amount of compensation was deposited before coming into force of the Act of 2013. According to the respondents, even after passing of the awards several persons had surrendered their lands with the JDA in lieu of compensation in the form of developed land for whom also the reservation of the plots have been made. Thus, the possession of about more than 95% of the lands under acquisition was with the respondents, and the possession of less than 100 hectares spread in small patches across few villages had to be taken. The compensation of almost all lands under acquisition was either paid or deposited. It is also stated that the work has already been assigned for the implementation of the prestigious and important project, and in the event of non availability of land to the contractors, the public exchequer would be effected adversely apart from delaying the project. While denying the allegations about the non-compliance of the provisions contained in the said Act, the respondents have prayed to dismiss the petitions. 3.7 The petitioners have filed their rejoinder to the reply filed on behalf of the respondents, to which the respondents have filed counter affidavit. Both the parties have produced voluminous documents in support of their respective cases. The court had called for the original files from the Government for perusal, and also called for the original record of the petitions filed by the petitioners earlier. For the sake of convenience, the assorted facts and chequerred history of litigation as emerging from the voluminous record of petitions may be summarised in the tabular form as under:-
5.1 The submissions of the learned counsel Mr. Anil Mehta for the petitioners.
In response to the preliminary objections raised by the learned AAG Mr. Prasad for the respondents with regard to the maintainability of the petitions, it has been sought to be submitted by Mr. Anil Mehta, learned counsel for the petitioners that the petitions were neither barred by the principles of res-judicata, nor barred by delay, laches or acquiesence. According to Mr. Mehta, the issues raised in the present petitions were neither heard nor finally decided by the court in earlier petitions. In the earlier set of eight petitions, the petitioners were simply religated to the settlement committee and the liberty was granted to them to approach the court again if they were aggrieved by the decision of the committee. The petitioners had approached the court again by filing the petitions being aggrieved by the decision of the empowered committee, however in the said petitions, the respondents having raised technical objections, the same were sought to be withdrawn with the permission of the court and the present petitions thereafter have been filed which could not be said to be barred by resjudicata or by delay, laches and acquiesence. 5.2 Pressing into service, the provisions of the JDA Act, it has been submitted by Mr. Mehta that there was no scheme framed by the JDA as per Section 38 of the JDA Act prior to initiation of the acquisition proceedings for the Ring Road and the development corridor. According to him, the proposal was prepared by the Asstt. Commissioner, JDA on 25.11.14 for developing the Ring Road as planned by the PWD, however the said proposal could not be materialised and the Government decided to handover the project to the JDA. Thereafter the JDA had undertaken the exercise for the said project, however found it difficult due to lack of availability of the funds. Therefore two options were given for the feasibility of the project, out of which one option was by selling the entire commercial and residential land within 90 meters wide strip on either side of the road and secondly to allot 15% developed land to the khatedars in lieu of compensation. The said proposal dated 25.11.04 prepared by the Asstt. Commissioner was approved by the Jaipur Development Commissioner and the Minister UDH, however the same was never approved by the Authority as contemplated under Section 38 and 39 of the JDA Act. The public objections were also not invited, nor the composition of authority, as defined under Section 4 of the JDA Act, was made by the JDA. 5.3 The proposal for acquisition of land was sent by the JDA without application of mind and the State Government had also issued the notification under Section 6 of the said Act without any application of mind. In the notification under Section 6 it was mentioned that the land was likely to be acquired for JDA for discharging its functions, however there was no proposal or project approved for acquisition of 360 meters land by the competent authority of JDA. Hence the requirements of Section 45 of the JDA Act were also not complied with. 5.4 The acquisition of additional land for financing the project could not be said to be a "public purpose" within the meaning of Section 3(f)(iii) of the L.A. Act. 5.5 Though the notifications under Section 4 were issued on 15.7.08 and published in the official gazette on 18.7.05, and in the newspapers on 30.7.05, the same were not widely published in the locality. The documents produced by the respondents alongwith the reply and the additional affidavit were not reliable. 5.6 The petitioners though had filed the objections, they were not given the opportunity of personal hearing and the Land Acquisition Officer Shri Anil Kumar Agrawal had prepared the report under Section 5A in mechanical manner. The second report of enquiry was filed by the LAO Shri Sunilkant Gautam on 28.3.06, however he had joined the office after the transfer of his predecessor Shri Anil Kumar Agrawal on 4.3.06. Hence the second report prepared by Shr Sunilkant Gautam stating that opportunity of hearing was granted to the khatedars was not correct. In view of the settled legal position, since the petitioners were deprived of their valuable right of personal hearing in the enquiry under Section 5A of the said Act, the entire proceedings had vitiated. 5.7 The allotment of 25% developed land to some of the petitioners in lieu of compensation on the basis of the circular dated 27.10.05 issued by the State Government was illegal and arbitrary in view of various decisions of the Supreme Court. The harmoneous reading of the Land Acquisition Act implied that the LAO was not empowered to pass the award other than for monetory compensation. As per Section 11(2) of the said Act, the matters as contemplated in Section 15, 23, 24 and 31(3) of the said Act have to be included in the award and the LAO could not act contrary to the said provisions. 5.8 In the cases where the khatedar-tenants had opted for 25% of the developed land, no award was passed by the LAO, and therefore evenif it is assumed that the provisions contained in Section 24(2) were not applicable, the proceedings had lapsed under Section 11 in absence of the award. Since the khatedars had right to withdraw the offer of the LAO prior to passing of the award, the khatedars-petitioners who had opted for the 25% of the developed land had right to resile from the said offer as no award was passed in their cases. As per the settled legal position, neither the consent nor the waiver could have affected the rights of the petitioners, when the circular issued by the State Government itself was illegal. 5.9 In case of those petitioners in whose favour award was made on 9.9.08, and no compensation was paid or deposited in the court prior to 1.1.14, the proceedings had lapsed as per Section 24(2) of the Act of 2013. The respondents had taken forcible possession from some of the petitioners with the help of police force between 25th September to 5th November, 2014 and such possession taken from such petitioners could not be said to be legal possession of the respondents. 5.10 The judgments rendered by the Supreme Court in respect of Section 24(2) of the Act of 2013 were binding to this court under Article 141 of the Constitution of India and could not be held to be per-incuriam.

6.2 The petitions listed in Category-E have been filed for the first time challenging the acquisition proceedings by way of misuse of process of law and they suffer from unexplained delay, laches and acquiescence.

6.3 In the petitions mentioned in Category-C the awards have been passed after 1.1.09 therefore, the question of lapsing of proceedings under Section 24(2) of the Act of 2013 would not arise.

6.4 The petitioners of the petitions mentioned in Category-B, had voluntarily surrendered the title and possession of their lands for getting the compensation in the form of developed land and have also executed the necessary documents for securing reservation/allotment of developed land, hence such petitioners could not have challenged the acquisition proceedings, the same being barred by the principles of waiver, estoppel and acquiescences. Such petitions also deserve to be dismissed as the concerned petitioners had concealed the material facts about their surrender of land and acceptance of reservation letters by them.

9. In the backdrop of these facts, the learned AAG for the respondents has challenged the very maintainability of these petitions, on various grounds like delay, laches, waiver, estoppel, abandonment of rights, concealment of facts and on the ground of being barred by the principles of constructive res-judicata. It is trite to say that the jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution being extraordinary jurisdiction, the party approaching the court has to come with clean hands disclosing all correct and material facts. The equitable jurisdiction cannot be exercised when the petitions suffer from the delay, laches and acquiescence. The conduct of the petitioners is also equally important to be seen while granting the relief in the petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. In an English decision in case of Lindsay Petroleum Co. Vs. Hurd (1984) 5 PC 221, while explaining the doctrine of latches, it was held by Sir Bames Peacock, that: