Writ petition dismissed due to inordinate 63-year delay and laches; rehabilitation statutes lack retrospective effect on prior land acquisition awards attaining finality.

JUDGMENT :

A.S. GADKARI, J.

1) Rule. Rule made returnable forthwith and with the consent of learned Advocates for respective parties taken up for hearing.

2) By this Petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the Petitioner has prayed for the following reliefs: -

“(a)This Hon’ble Court may, to direct the Additional Collector, Satara to prepare the report regarding the Petitioner’s proposal and send to the Additional Collector, Raigad.

(b) This Hon’ble Court may, by way of appropriate writ Order or direction, direct the Additional Collector, Raigad to process the Petitioner’s application dated August 08, 2022 and allot land as prayed for, if the Petitioner is entitled to get alternate land as prayed for, within a period of three weeks from the date of Order of this Hon’ble Court;”

2.1) In our view, the above prayers are ambiguous, rather unusual. The pleadings in the Petition are equally vague and do not disclose the legal basis for the reliefs sought particularly after a lapse of or inordinate delay of 63 years.

3) It is the case of the Petitioner that, the lands of his predecessors were acquired for Koyna Project, Satara and an Award in respect thereof was declared on 15^th April 1959.

3.1) Once land is acquired under the Land Acquisition proceedings and an Award is declared, it must ordinarily be presumed that the compensation determined under the Award was received by the landowners and that the acquisition proceedings attained finality.

3.2) The present Petition has been filed after an extraordinary delay of more than six decades from the date of the Award. The Petitioner now seeks to invoke the provisions of the Maharashtra Resettlement of Project Displaced Persons Act, 1976 (said Act) (later replaced by The Maharashtra Project Affected Persons Rehabilitation Act, 1999) for allotment of alternate land.

4) It is well settled that, the extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is discretionary and cannot be invoked by a litigant who approaches the Court after an inordinate and unexplained delay. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of State of Madhya Pradesh v. Bhailal Bhai , reported in (AIR 1964 SC 1006) has held that, though the Limitation Act does not strictly apply to writ proceedings, the doctrine of delay and laches is nevertheless applicable and relief may be refused where the petitioner approaches the Court after an unreasonable lapse of time.

5) This claim is wholly misconceived. The Award in the present case was declared in 1959, whereas the said Act came into force only on 11^th March 1977. It is well settled that a statute does not operate retrospectively unless such intention is expressly provided in it. The 1976 Act does not contain any provision given it retrospective operation so as to reopen acquisition or Awards that had already attained finality decades earlier.

6) In these circumstances, the Petitioner, claiming to be successor- in-title of Laxman Atmaram Niman (Pawar), cannot seek to reopen or derive further benefits from an acquisition which had concluded long prior to the coming into force of the rehabilitation legislation. Permitting such a claim after the lapse of more than sixty years would defeat the principle of finality in land acquisition proceedings and cannot be countenanced in writ jurisdiction.

7) In the case of Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board v. T.T. Murali Babu , reported in (2014) 4 SCC 108, the Supreme Court reiterated that, a person who sleeps over his rights for a long period cannot seek