1. Writ appeal by persons who claim to be owners of land in Survey/Block Nos.141 and 145 measuring an extent of 1 acre 18 guntas and 1 acre 30 guntas respectively of Amargol Village in Hubli Taluk of Dharwad District.

2. Appellants are aggrieved that a challenge mounted by them to the scheme for development of land by the 2nd respondent, Hubli-Dharwad Urban Development Authority and acquisition of their lands for implementation of such plan as not legal has been rejected by a learned Single Judge of this Court by dismissing their writ petition.

3. In the writ petition it had contended that the authority has acted in a partisan manner in not acquiring the entire extent proposed under the Scheme, but has periodically given up chunks of land proposed for acquisition under the scheme; that, though the appellants would very much like to get a like treatment, they failed and such other grounds to seek relief in the writ petition which did not prove to be of any success to them for the reason that the learned Single Judge who examined their case in Writ Petition No. 10584/2007 dismissed the petition as per the order dated 3.7.2008 being of the view that the challenge is at a very belated stage; that the authority has gone ahead with the acquisition proceedings under the scheme; that other members of the family had approached this Court by filing writ petitions for the very purpose and after their failure, the petitioners-persent appellants have come up with a repeat petition; that it is also without any bona fides and therefore, to be dismissed.

4. Undaunted by their failure, appellants have come up in this appeal and though an appeal of this nature seldom receives much attention and very rarely meets with any degree of success, as more and more facts and developments were made known to the Court during the course of the hearing in the last 3 to 4 occasions, we have realized that this is a classic case of gross abuse of drastic power of the State to acquire land for public purpose under compulsion and to compound the same, a scheme which had been proposed by respondent No.2 – Development Authority has suffered several mutilations, surgeries and remains in a truncated form, casting doubts on the efficacy of implementation of the scheme and as to whether, it really can serve any public good at the cost of considerable private misery.

5. We have also noticed that the State government in the initial stages and later the authority itself, have acted in an unreasonable, whimsical, arbitrary manner systematically excluding chunks of land from the scope of the scheme and the scope of acquisition, notwithstanding the learned counsel appearing for the authority claiming that the scheme is at a concluding stage and the authority wants to distribute sites from out of the acquired area to thousands of eager aspiring applicants.

6. The Hubli-Dharwad Urban Development Authority, it appears, had proposed a scheme to develop what is known as Amaragol Village Scheme, a village located in between Hubli-Dharwad cities, which is evidenced by a notification dated 14.11.2000 published by the authority under Section 17(1) of the Karnataka Urban Development Act, 1987 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Act’). The scheme proposed was covering an extent of 88 acres 6 guntas.

7. The authority, on receiving representations in respect of this publication, was of the view that an extent of 9 acres 35 guntas of land should be excluded from the scope of the scheme and therefore, after excluding this extent of land, forwarded a proposal to the State Government for approval of the scheme in respect of the remaining extent of 79 acres 32 guntas of land, as envisaged under Section 18 of the Act. Section 18 of the Act reads as under:

18. Sanction of scheme:- (1) After publication of the scheme and service of notices as provided in Section 17 and after consideration of representations, if any, received in respect thereof, the authority shall submit the scheme, m