IMPORTANT POINT
The absence of a notified urban area in Lakshadweep necessitates treating the land as rural, thus a multiplication factor of 2 is justified for compensation calculations.

JUDGMENT :

(A.K. Jayasankaran Nambiar, J.)

The petitioners in W.P.(C).Nos.35537 of 2024, 203 of 2025, 4432 of 2025 and 6775 of 2025 are the appellants in these writ appeals that impugn the common judgment dated 02.04.2025 of a learned Single Judge in the writ petitions.

2. The brief facts necessary for the disposal of these writ appeals are as follows:

The appellants had approached the writ court aggrieved by the fixation of the multiplication factor as 1 [one] for calculating the market value of the lands situated in Lakshadweep, that were acquired from them by the Lakshadweep Administration in terms of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 [hereinafter referred to as the “2013 Act”]. It was their contention in the writ petitions that while the market value of the lands acquired from them had to be determined in accordance with Section 26(2) read with the First Schedule to the 2013 Act, the Land Acquisition Collector had erroneously/arbitrarily taken the multiplication factor as 1 [one] for calculating the market value, by ignoring the multiplication factor stipulated in Sl.No.2 of the First Schedule. Other grounds of challenge, including the legality of the delegation of the powers of the Appropriate Government to the Land Acquisition Collector, and the reasonableness of the classification of the area where the lands were situated as 'urban', for the purposes of determining the multiplication factor, were also raised in the writ petitions.

3. The learned Single Judge, who considered the writ petitions, after rejecting the contention of the writ petitioners regarding the legality of the delegation of powers of the appropriate Government to the Land Acquisition Collector and the notification issued by the latter, proceeded to consider the challenge to the fixation of the multiplication factor as 1 [one]. The said issue was answered at paragraphs 7 and 8 of the impugned judgment as follows:

“7. The only other question is whether Ext.P5 has been issued in accordance with the provision contained in the First schedule to the Act. The counsel for the petitioners contended that going by serial No.3 to the First Schedule the factor has to be fixed based on the distance of the project from the urban area and since the Union Territory of Lakshadweep is not an urban area, the factor cannot be fixed as ‘one’ as provided under serial No.3 of the First Schedule. It is submitted that there has been no consideration of the basis, which is to determine the factor as per serial No.2 of the First Schedule. It is further submitted that since the entire Lakshadweep area is in a rural area the multiplication factor should have been ‘two’ since no distance can be drawn between an urban area and rural area in the case of Lakshadweep. The Standing Counsel on the other hand submitted that the power is available to the appropriate Government to fix any factor between 1 and 2 and there is no prohibition for fixing ‘one’ as the factor. It is submitted that fixing ‘one’ as the factor is also justified by the fact that even though the Union Territory of Lakshadweep is not treated as an urban area for any other purpose it has all the characteristics of an urban area going by the density of population and other factors which have been explained in the counter affidavit. Details of the total population in the total area and the manner in which it is comparable to urban areas have been explained. It is stated that the road network density in Lakshadweep is the fourth highest in India and in terms of other infras