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10. A perusal of the impugned judgment shows that the learned ADJ attributed constructive knowledge of the essential contents of the award to the appellants on the premise, that at the time of making the reference under Section 30-31 of the Act, the LAC enclosed a memorandum which contains the essential contents to the award, namely, the extent of land acquired, Khasra numbers, name of the person making the claim, and total amount of compensation to be apportioned. The impugned judgment is premised on the basis that where the claimant is represented through counsel, he would have constructive knowledge of all that is placed on the file of the Reference Court, which would include the said memorandum as well as a copy of the award itself.

"The Award was passed in the year 1986. Petitioners have knowledge of passing of the award. Nothing prevented the petitioner to either inspect the Award file or took certified copy from LAC Office or Court for almost 15 years. Thus it is proved that the petitioners diligently contested reference petition under Section 30-31 of L.A. Act where the amount of compensation is mentioned and deposited in Court and petitioners had opportunity of inspecting the Award or taking its certified copy leads to inference that petitioner had knowledge of market value fixed by the Collector or at least had constructive knowledge of the same. Knowledge whether actual or constructive is sufficient for the purposes of computing limitation, even otherwise petitioners have contended that they filed the present reference without taking knowledge of the content of the award as it is apparent from para 10 of the reference petition filed by the petitioner relevant lines of para is reproduced as below:

34. In my view, the fact that the appellants did not make the said statement on oath in their reference application, cannot be fatal to the maintainability of the said application. The question of the appellant adducing evidence, or deposing on oath with regard to their deriving knowledge, or constructive knowledge, of the essential contents of the Award would have arisen, had there been a contest by the respondents to their averment that they had not derived actual or constructive knowledge of the essential contents of the Award earlier. Since, in the pleadings, the Union of India did not deny the said position, and the DDA made a bald denial without any substance or basis, the occasion for the appellants to make the said statement on oath really did not arise. The said aspect was never put in issue before the Reference Court by the respondents, and no trial was held thereon. Apart from making the said statement, the appellants could have done precious little to establish their lack of knowledge of the essential contents of the Award, as they could not be expected to prove the negative. Consequently, the statement made by the appellants in their reference application in paras 9 and 10 was sufficient, particularly, when there was no denial of the said averments by the respondents. In any event, in the present appeal, the said statements have been reiterated which are duly supported by the affidavit of one of the appellants, namely, Sukhbir Singh. In the present appeal, the appellants have stated that the "appellants got the knowledge of the actual contents of the Award regarding the market value determined by the Land Acquisition Collector only after 25.08.2001 when the appellants received the payment vouchers of the compensation of the apportioned amount on 10.09.2001". Thus, there is sufficient compliance with the requirements of the judgment in Bhagwan Das (supra) by the appellants.

39. The learned ADJ has returned the finding with regard to the constructive knowledge of the contents of the award of the appellants by adopting an extremely stretched reasoning, and by successively assuming facts on the basis of assumptions. Firstly, he assumed that in the proceedings under Sections 30-31 of the Act, as a matter of fact, the memorandum disclosing the essential contents of the award or the award had been filed, in the present case. He also assumed that the counsel of the appellants must have inspected the record of the said reference petition. He also assumed that the counsel, during such assumed inspection, would have noticed the memorandum and/or the award of the LAC and perused the same and would have, thus, derived the knowledge of the contents of the award. He also assumed that after gaining such knowledge of the contents of the award, the counsel would have communicated the same to the appellants. There is absolutely no basis for any of the aforesaid assumptions. Pertinently, this does not even appear to have been pleaded, much less established by the respondents by leading any evidence before the learned ADJ. Constructive knowledge of the contents of the award has also been attributed to the appellants, merely because they had engaged a counsel to represent them, by holding that it was the responsibility of the appellants to gain knowledge of the essential contents of the award by inspecting the Award in the office of the LAC. However, in the decision relied upon by the appellants, such reasoning was not adopted by the Supreme Court, or by this Court.