The State cannot deprive a citizen of his property without following due process of law and without paying just compensation.

JUDGMENT :

Arijit Banerjee, J.:

1. All these appeals involved similar issues of fact and law and hence have been taken up together for hearing and disposal. We will refer to the records of one of the appeals being MAT 207 of 2018 (State of West Bengal and Ors. v. Asit Das & Ors.) for the purpose of disposing of all the appeals. Land of the respondents/writ petitioners was taken over by the State sometime in the year 1982 by requisitioning the same under the provisions of the West Bengal Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Act, 1948 (in short the Act II of 1948). Notice under Section 3(1) of Act II of 1948 was issued sometime in the year 1976.

2. The project for which the land was requisitioned was abandoned by the requiring body. However, the land was never returned to the writ petitioners and a public road has been constructed thereon. No acquisition proceedings, whether under Act 2 of 1948 or under Act I of 1894 were ever initiated. Some rent compensation may have been paid by the State to the writ petitioners but no compensation for utilisation of their land was paid.

3. Being aggrieved, the writ petitioners approached the learned Single Judge in the year 2015 by filing W.P. No. 24940(W) of 2015. The concerned Block Land and Land Reforms Officer, Arambagh, pursuant to an order dated September 30, 2015 filed a report after conducting requisite survey.

4. On June 19, 2017, the writ petition was taken up for final disposal and the impugned order was passed. The learned Judge found from the report of the concerned BL & LRO that a road has been constructed on the land of the writ petitioners. The learned Judge noted that admittedly no land acquisition proceeding had been initiated for utilising the land of the writ petitioners and no compensation had been paid to them. Accordingly, the learned Judge disposed of the writ petition by directing the Land Acquisition Collector “to initiate the land acquisition proceeding against the petitioners under the provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 and to pay compensation to the petitioners for acquiring the land for construction of the road within a period of 12 weeks from the date of communication of the order.”

5. Being aggrieved, the State of West Bengal and its concerned officers have come up in appeal.

6. The material facts of the case are not in dispute. Land of the writ petitioners was requisitioned under Section 3 of Act 2 of 1948. The project for which the land was requisitioned never took off and was abandoned. Although the land was formally de-requisitioned prior thereto, a public road was constructed on the land. The land was never acquired either under the provisions of Act 1 of 1894 or Act 2 of 1948.

7. Learned Advocate for the appellants/State submitted that the writ petition should have been dismissed on the ground of delay and/or laches alone. The land was requisitioned in connection with LA Case no. 1-35/72-73, sometime in 1972-73. The writ petitioners approached the writ Court only in the year 2015, after a delay of more than 40 years. It was submitted that a right not exercised for a long time is non-existent. Even when no limitation period is prescribed by any statute relating to certain proceedings, the Courts have coined the doctrine of laches and delay as well as the doctrine of acquiescence and have non-suited litigants who approached the Court belatedly without any justifiable explanation for the inordinate delay.

Delay defeats equity. Reliance was placed by learned Counsel for the State on the following decisions:-

(i) U.P. Jal Nigam & Anr. v. Jaswant Singh & Anr., reported at (2006) 11 SCC 464.

(ii) Rajeev Suri v. Delhi Development Authority and Ors., reported at 2021 SCC online SC 7.

(iii) Indore Development Authority v. Manoharlal & Ors., reported at (2020) 8 SCC 129.

8. While it is true that the Courts are reluctant to enforce a stale claim, it also cannot be countenanced that the State