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2. These appeals have arisen from the impugned judgment and order dated W.P. No.9601/2011, passed by the writ court on 6/11/2012 (Omprakash Jaiswal v/s. State of P.P. & Ors.), by which and whereunder, the writ court partly allowed the writ petition by holding that notification under Section 4(1) of the Land Acquisition Act, is a valid notification, but quashed the order dated 14.3.11 issued by Collector, Indore under Section 4 of Land Acquisition Act (for short "the Act"), order dated 27/09/2011, passed by the SDO, Depalpur whereby case was recommended to Collector, Indore, Order dated 28/09/2011 passed by Collector, Indore whereby case was recommended to Commissioner, Indore Division, Indore and order dated 1/10/2011 passed by Commissioner, Indore whereby the recommendations of SDO and Collector were approved and, thus, the subsequent proceeding stand vitiated i.e. notification dated 4/11/2011 under Section 6 of the Act.

6. The landowners/Bhumiswami's filed writ petitions questioning the validity of this notification alleging that it suffered from a number of infirmities, principal infirmity being that the said notification was totally vague in respect of the lands sought to be acquired. In that, neither the description of the lands i.e. Survey numbers or khasra numbers were given nor the names of the landowners, whose lands were sought to be acquired in four villages, were given. The landowners also challenged the order dated 27/09/2011, passed by the SDO, Depalpur whereby the case was recommended to Collector, Indore whereby the case was recommended to the Commissioner Indore Division, Indore. In turn, vide order dated 01/10/2011 Commissioner Indore passed the order whereby recommendations made by Collector and SDO were and on 4/11/2011 notification was issued under Section 6 of the Act.

The work was allotted by Collector, Indore relating to land acquisition cases on 15/09/2011. If the SDO, Depalpur was acting as Collector for the purpose of disposal of objections filed by the landowners, then recommendations were directly required to be sent to the Commissioner, Indore, who was appropriate Government and there was no necessity of recommendations which were made by Collector, Indore, who has not heard the objections. This indicates that the recommendations were not made by SDO in the capacity of Collector.

8. Since the objection was that the concerned SDO is having no jurisdiction to entertain the objections inspite of Notifications dated 24/12/83 and 15/02/99 of the State Government as it does not empower the SDO to hear the objections filed under Section 5-A of the Act, therefore, SDO was duty bound to hear and decide the said objections first as it goes to the root of the case.

Apart from this, even if it is assumed that SDO, Depalpur was empowered to hear the objections, then too, Mr. Gautam Singh, SDO who was authorised by the Collector vide distribution memo dated 15/09/11 was required to re-hear the objection before making recommendations and was having no authority to recommend the case on 27/09/11 on the basis of hearing on objections, which were heard by his predecessor on 24/05/11. With the aforesaid, they prayed for issuance of writ of certiorari for quashment of the notification issued under Section 4 of the Act and recommendations made by the SDO, Depalpur dated 27/09/2011, recommendations made by the Collector, Indore on 28/09/2011 and order dated 1/10/2011, passed by the Commissioner Indore Division, Indore.