The forfeiture of administrative charges due to withdrawal of land acquisition is valid when initiated by the project proponent as per established policy guidelines.

JUDGMENT :

1. This matter is taken up through hybrid mode.

2. Petitioner, in this Writ Petition, prays for a direction to set aside the letter No.14493 dated 2^nd August, 2012 (Annexure-11) issued by the Land Officer, Odisha Infrastructure Development Corporation (for brevity, ‘IDCO’), Bhubaneswar forfeiting the amount deposited by the Petitioner towards administrative charges and land acquisition establishment contingencies as per the decision taken in the 66^th meeting dated 4^th October, 2005 (Annexure-12) of the Board of Directors and the Circular No.32463/R dated 14^th June, 1999 (Annexure-13) of the Government of Odisha issued by the Department of Revenue and Disaster Management.

3. Mr. Mohanty, learned Senior Advocate for the Petitioner submits that on 15^th October, 2004, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Petitioner and the State Government to set up a 5 million tons per annum (MTPA) steel plant in Odisha. Accordingly, on the requisition of IDCO land acquisition proceeding was initiated covering nine villages of Keonjhar district identified for establishment of steel plant proposed by the Petitioner and IDCO directed the Petitioner, vide its letter No.1182 dated 20^th January, 2007 (Annexure-4) to deposit certain amount on different heads. Since the project proponent-the Petitioner had already deposited Rs.8.00 crores with IDCO, it was required to deposit the balance amount of Rs.6,81,49,857/- with IDCO. Accordingly, the project proponent, namely, the Petitioner deposited the same with IDCO. For acquisition of land, Gram Sabha was held, but ultimately, due to stiff opposition of the local inhabitants, the possession of the acquired land could not be delivered to the project proponent. However, by then, the award in the land acquisition proceeding had already been passed. As it was not possible on the part of IDCO to deliver possession of the required land, the Petitioner, vide its letter dated 6^th June, 2012 (Annexure-9) requested as under:-

“In view of the above, we request you to take appropriate steps, to withdraw land acquisition proceeding in respect of entire project site under Section 48 of Land Acquisition Act 1.894. We also request IDCO to allocate a minimum of 800 to 1000 acres of land, in the form of alternate, site, from an industrial area for 1.5 MTPA steel plant, for going ahead with the implementation of the project in a phase-wise manner, the capacity of which could be expanded to 5 MTPA steel plant at the later date.”

(emphasis supplied)

Thus, the request of the Petitioner was processed and ultimately vide impugned letter under Annexure-11, the proposal submitted by the Petitioner was accepted by IDCO subject to forfeiture of administrative charges and land acquisition establishment contingencies as per the decision taken in the 66^th meeting of the Board of Directors (Annexure-12) and Circular of the Revenue and Disaster Management Department (Annexure-13) referred to above supra.

4. Mr. Mohanty, learned Senior Advocate drew attention of this Court to the Circular of Revenue and Excise Department No. 32463 dated 14^th June, 1999 (Annexure-13), relevant portion of which is reproduced hereunder.

“It is sometimes observed that the requisitioning authorities file application for withdrawal of the land acquisition proceedings and consequently claim refund of the sum deposited by them towards establishment cost, law charges and printing charges etc. In such cases, no clear-cut policy guidelines had been, hitherto, enunciated by the State Govt. for deciding upon the entitlement of the requisitioning authorities for refund. In this connection, a draft policy was circulated by the Revenue & Excise Department vide letter No. 2788