A land acquisition under the Maharashtra Industrial Development Act is valid despite a long delay in challenging it, especially when prior consent terms are binding.

JUDGMENT :

G.S. Kulkarni, J.

A. Preface

1. This petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India primarily challenges the acquisition of the petitioner’s land described in the petition to be Survey No.137/2 at village Akurdi, Taluka Haveli, District Pune, under the provisions of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Act , 1961 (for short ‘the MID Act’), which had attained finality in the year 1971, the possession of which was taken over on 11 February 1972 under the panchnama dated 21 January 1972 and 11 February 1972.

2. At the outset it may be stated that this petition was filed on 31 July 2010 and as seen from the cause title of the petition, the petitioner has described himself to be 45 years of age. Hence, when the land acquisition took place culminating into the possession of the land being taken over, the petitioner was 7 years of age. We observe so as we are quite astonished with the verification clause to this petition, when the petitioner solemnly affirms that the facts which are pleaded in the memo of the petition (paragraphs 1 to 14) are true to “his own knowledge”. Notably a survey of the averments in these paragraphs would possibly lead us to arrive at a conclusion that the verification to the petition itself would not be acceptable and legally false as the petitioner could not have deposed personal knowledge of many of these facts.

3. We may next observe that the essential principles in taking recourse to the proceedings under Article 226 in invoking the powers of judicial review, have also been completely discarded and/or deliberately overlooked, namely that what is sought in the petition is a discretionary and equitable remedy, and the nature of the reliefs which are prayed for could be asserted only when the intervention of the Court is sought at the appropriate time, and not after a prolonged and/or an inordinate, much less an unexplained delay of 38 years (as on date of filing of the petition) after the acquisition itself stood completed and the parties have changed their position. This more particularly as in the present case the acquisition in question has antecedents since the year 1963, the details of which we discuss hereinafter.

4. On such conspectus, what is intriguing is that there is not a whisper or any averment whatsoever to justify such inordinate delay and laches in filing the petition which would go to the root of the matter in entertaining the causes of the nature being canvassed by the petitioner. This more particularly, when it is the petitioner’s contention that one of the primary cause for the petitioner to file this petition, and in our opinion, quite cleverly, is that just before filing of the petition, the petitioner is stated to have received knowledge, that it is the Government’s name which has been entered in the records of right relating to the said land, and that the petitioner was not aware about any land acquisition proceedings, hence, the petitioner was required to approach this Court in the present proceedings. This case of the petitioner can be seen from paragraph 14(g) of the writ petition, in which the petitioner has averred that respondent No.2 – MIDC (the acquiring body) without, in any manner, resorting to the acquisition proceedings by following the process of law, and without notice or without finalizing, offering and paying any compensation to the petitioner has entered its name in the record of rights relating to the land in question. This was also the basic argument repeatedly canvassed before us by the learned Counsel for the petitioner.

B. Facts

5. On the aforesaid preface on the nature of the cause asserted in the proceedings, we now refer to the relevant facts the pleadings reveal:-

It is stated that the petitioner’s father M