1. Hubballi-Dharwad are the twin cities in the North-West of the State of Karnataka and Dharwad has a permanent Circuit Bench of the Karnataka High Court. To develop a Rapid Transport System, a Company namely “Hubli Dharwad Bus Rapid Transport System” (for short ‘HDBRTS’) was established by the Karnataka State under the provisions of the Companies Act and to develop an Eight Lane road between these twin cities from Unkal Lake, Hubballi to Jubilee Circle, Dhrawad, to diffuse the severe traffic congestion and facilitate the rapid transport, the land in question was acquired by the respondent-State under the provisions of Karnataka State Highways Act, 1964 (for short ‘the Act’) for the said BRTS Project, vide Notification dated 21st November 2012 under Section 15 of the said State Act of 1964.

2. The present Writ Appeals arise out of the orders passed by the learned Single Judge on 17th March 2017, dismissing batch of Writ Petitions lead by Writ Petition No.103516-103563 of 2015 [LA-RES] and repelling the challenge of the petitioners-landlosers, the learned Single Judge held that since the land in question was acquired for the said HDBRTS project by issuing the Notification way back on 21st November 2012 under Section 15 of the Karnataka State Highways Act, the provisions of the new Central Land Acquisition Act known as ‘The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013’ (for short ‘RTFCTLARR Act’) could not be applied to the present acquisition.

3. Another contention raised before the learned Single Judge was that the representation of the petitioners to the effect that instead of acquiring the lands and properties of the petitioners for the purpose of road widening for creating such eight lane road including BRTS, the respondents could construct fly-overs, wherever it was required reducing road width from 35 meters to 30 meters, to provide a smooth flow of traffic, also could not be considered at this stage, since an Award has already been passed in the matter on 08th June 2016 under Section 28 of the Act of 1964. The learned Single Judge also noted that vast majority of the land-losers, whose land was acquired for the said Project had already agreed to such acquisition and had accepted the Consent Awards passed under Section 27 of the Act and had accepted the compensation accordingly. However, the present set of small number of petitioners-appellants in a constant litigation against the said acquisition, wanted to keep their lis alive insisting upon the applicability of new Central Act of 2013, which came into force with effect from 01st January 2014 and therefore, filed the aforesaid batch of writ petitions, which came to be dismissed by the learned Single Judge.

4. The learned counsel for the appellants, Sri. V.B. Kulkarni, emphatically submitted before us that the provisions of Sections 103 and 107 of the new Central RTFCTLARR Act, 2013, stipulated that the provisions of the said new law were enacted in addition to and not in derogation of any other law for the time being in force and Section 107 of the new Central Act permitted the State Government to enact any law more beneficial to the affected families by such land acquisition. He, therefore, submitted that since the Award in the present case was not passed before 01st January 2014, the date on which the new Central Act of 2013 came into force, the provisions of the new Central Act of 2013 would apply to the acquisition of the present case in view of Section 24(2) of the new Act of 2013 and the learned Single Judge has erred in holding otherwise.

5. While categorically admitting that Appellants are not against the said BRTS Project and they have not pressed their prayer for laying a challenge to the acquisition itself, however, he drew our attention to the Government Order PWD 175 EAP 2014, Bengaluru dated 14th November 2014 and also of Resettlement Action Plan, Addendum-I, issued by HDBRTS Company Limit