The doctrine of delay and laches applies, and the court will not help litigants who sleep over their rights. Claimants must be given an opportunity to lead evidence in support of their claims for enhanced compensation, but this principle cannot be used to revive long-dead claims.

JUDGMENT :

SANDEEP V. MARNE, J.

1. Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith. With the consent of the parties, heard finally at admission stage.

2. By fling these writ petitions, an attempt is made to infuse life into dead claims fled by Petitioners for enhancement of compensation. Various orders passed by Civil Judge Sr. Division, Omerga rejecting Petitioners’ respective Land Acquisition References on account of their default to remain present are the subject matter of challenge in the present petitions.

3. Following are the details of the proceedings initiated by petitioners and dates on which they have been dismissed:

4. Challenging the aforesaid orders rejecting their LARs, present petitions are fled after long and inordinate delay either in December 2021 or January, 2022. The orders dismissing the LARs are sought to be set aside on a specious plea that the reference fled under section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act is not an appeal against an award and that in absence of any material being produced in support of claim for higher compensation, reference cannot be rejected. Reliance is placed on the decision of this Court in Ganpati Rama Hazare vs. State of Maharashtra and Others in Writ Petition No. 10237 of 2022 decided on 11.10.2022 wherein this Court held in paragraph nos. 8 to 11 as under:

“8. However, it is now a settled position that reference filed under Section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act is not an appeal against award and it is necessary to produce the material based on which the higher compensation is claimed. No doubt, in Ramanlal Deochand Shah (supra) relied upon by Mr. Gaikwad, the Apex Court has held that the burden of adducing evidence in support of higher claim for compensation is on the plaintiffs, but ultimately the Apex Court has also granted an opportunity to the appellant therein to adduce evidence in support of the claim for enhancement of compensation.

9. In Walmik Trimbak Tupe (supra) this Court was dealing with somewhat similar situation. In the bunch of cases, this Court dealt with cases of petitioners therein who had not adduced the evidence due to unavoidable circumstances. After considering the entire law of the subject, this Court held in Para 10 and 11 as under:

“10. In Para 4 (1) of the aforesaid case, the Supreme Court observed that a reference under Section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act is not an appeal against the award and the court cannot take into account the material relied upon by the Land Acquisition Officer in his award unless the said material is produced and proved before the court. In almost all the land Acquisition references, which are subject matter of the present writ petitions, the learned Judges of the respective Reference Courts suo-moto gone through the award and sale instances relied upon by the Land Acquisition Officers even though the said sale instances are not produced and proved before the Reference Courts.

11. In view of the same, even though there was an attempt on the part of Reference Courts to decide the reference on merits, however, in the given set of facts and in terms of the ratio laid down by the Supreme Court in the cases, as referred above, I conclude that the Land Acquisition Reference petitions, which are subject matter of these writ petitions, are not decided on merits and as such, the impugned judgment and orders passed by the respective Reference Courts in Land Acquisition References, as mentioned in the chart in Para 3 of this judgment, are not sustainable in th