The Land Acquisition Officer And ... vs R. Manickammal, L. Bathavatsal, L. ... on 12 February, 2002
In The Land Acquisition Officer and Special Tahsildar (LA), Adi Dravidar Welfare, Coimbatore and Anr. v. R. Manickammal and Ors. 2002 (2) CTC 1, a similar issue arising under the same Act 31/78 was considered by a Division Bench of this Court consisting of B. Subhashan Reddy, Chief Justice (as he then was) and A. Subbulakshmy, J. That was a case wherein the District Collector, under Section 4(1) of the Act, after enquiry, has opined that the value of the site to be acquired is high and prohibitive and therefore not desirable to acquire for the purpose, However, the Secretary to the Government has intervened and issued a mandate to the Collector to go ahead with the acquisition and ultimately, the notification was issued under Section 4(1), and a question was raised about the jurisdiction of the Government to intervene on the ground that it was the District Collector to exercise his function and the Government has nothing to do with the same. The Division Bench while distinguishing the Central Act (Land Acquisition Act, 1894) from the State Act (Act 31/78) with reference to Section 4(1), has clearly held that under the Central Act, the Government is the authority to issue notification which can delegate its function to any other person including the Collector, whereas in the State Act, the Government's intervention is not at all contemplated since the entire power has been vested with the Collector himself and not with anybody else. The Division Bench has categorically held that the decision to acquire land under the Act 31/78 should be exercised only by the District Collector by applying his mind independently and there is no delegation of the same to anybody else. The relevant portion of the judgement of the Division Bench is as follows: