The court affirmed that under Section 80 of the Act' 2013, landholders are entitled to statutory interest of 9% for the first year and 15% thereafter until compensation is paid, superseding any contrary resolutions.

JUDGMENT :

SUNITA AGARWAL, J.

1. In compliance of the order dated 02.12.2024 passed by us in Special Civil Application No.16200 of 2024, a copy of the Government Resolution dated 02.01.2025 issued from the Revenue Department, Secretariat, Government of Gujarat, Gandhinagar in the matter of grant of statutory interest under Section 80 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (for short, “the Act’ 2013”) has been placed before us by Ms. Hetal Patel, learned Assistant Government Pleader appearing for the State Respondents.

2. All the writ petitions herein raise a common issue with regard to denial of statutory interest under Section 80 of the Act’ 2013. While making the awards passed after enforcement of the Act’ 2013 with effect from 01.01.2014. All the writ petitions listed on the board today have, thus, being connected herewith and have been heard together and are being decided by this common judgment with the consent of the learned counsels for the parties on a perusal of the Government Resolution No. RD/LAQ/e-file/15/2024/5286/GH dated 02.01.2025 placed before us today.

3. The common issues raised in this set of writ petitions are that the landholders/petitioners have been deprived of their agricultural lands without adopting due process of law. The possession of the lands in question had been taken much prior to the enforcement of the Act’ 2013 with effect from 01.01.2014 without undertaking the due process of acquisition. After resistance of the petitioners, the acquisition proceedings were undertaken and the award was declared by application of the provisions of the Act’ 2013. All other elements of compensation though have been computed, as per own case of the petitioners in accordance with the provisions of the Act’ 2013, but statutory interest under Section 80 of the Act’ 2013 has been denied. And in place of statutory interest of 09% and 15% under Section 80 of the Act’ 2013, by applying a Government Resolution No. LAQ/1084/PRP/GH dated 18.06.1986, only 09% interest for delayed payment of compensation has been determined in the form of rental value of the lands in question. In some of the matters, even 09% interest on the compensation amount has been denied.

4. Be that as it may, in many of the matters earlier, we have passed a positive order directing the competent authority to recompute compensation by providing benefit of Section 80 of the Act’ 2013 and after recomputation, the 09%

interest as rent, if paid, was directed to be adjusted. One of such orders dated 04.09.2024 passed in Special Civil Application No.12542 of 2024 has been placed before us by the learned Assistant Government Pleader as a reminder.

5. However, when we faced with the repeated writ petitions being filed in the Court raising identical issues of denial of statutory interest under Section 80 of the Act’ 2013 inspite of our order dated 04.09.2024 even in some later award, we were constrained to pass the order dated 02.12.2024, whereby we required the Principal Secretary, Revenue Department, Government of Gujarat to look into the issue and take a call. We left it to the wisdom of the concerned officer to go through the provisions of the Act’ 2013 and decide as to whether non-inclusion of Section 80 interest at the time of making award under the Act’ 2013 would result in denial of statutory benefit to the landholders. And if that be so, proper instructions were required to be issued by the concerned officers to rectify the mistake, which is being committed repeatedly.

6. On these directions, we have received the copy of the Government Resolution No. RD/LAQ/e-file/15/2024/5286/GH dated 02.01.2025, which reads a