By the Court.—Under challenge is the judgment, order and award dated 18.5.1993 passed by the First Addl. District Judge, Ghaziabad in a batch of 34 land acquisition references and the consequential decrees thereof.

2. All these 34 appeals were listed and heard by us together with First Appeal No. 357 of 1993 NTPC v. State of U.P. and another and connected appeals as probably in all appeals land so acquired was for the benefit for NTPC. However, on closure scrutiny we found that in the above 34 appeals the notification for acquisition, award made by the SLAO as also the judgment, order and award of the reference Court are all different. Therefore even though the arguments of the parties were on common line in both the set of appeals, we considered it proper to segregate these appeals and to decide them by a separate judgment. A preliminary notification was issued under Section 4 (1) of the L.A. Act (hereinafter referred to as Act) on 5.8.1986 for acquiring an area 19 Bigha, 6 Biswa and 12 Biswansi in village Siddhipur, paragana Dasana, Tehsil-Hapur, District Ghaziabad for the purposes of setting up a power plant by the National Thermal Power Corporation (hereinafter referred to as NTPC). It was followed by declaration under Section 6 of the Act which was published on 21.10.1986. The possession of the acquired land was taken on 28.2.1987. The Special Land Acquisition Officer (hereinafter referred to as SLAO) awarded compensation at the rate ranging from Rs. 8,614/- to 15,614/-per bigha by classifying the land on the basis of its soil quality and agricultural utility. Not satisfied by the compensation so offered, the claimants preferred references under Section 18 of the Act upon which these 34 references were registered and LAR No. 126/89 was made leading case. The reference Court vide impugned judgment and order has enhanced the compensation at flat rate of Rs. 19,000/- per pakka bigha along with statutory benefits.

3. This enhancement of compensation by the reference Court has been assailed in these appeals by the NTPC.

4. We have heard Sri K.M. Misra for the appellant and Sri M.K. Tripathi for the claimants. Sri S.K. Mehrotra appeared for the State of U.P.

5. Learned Counsel for the NTPC has first contended that the burden to prove inadequacy of compensation is upon the claimants and they have to prove the bona fide of the sale transaction relied upon by them by producing vendor and vendee in the reference Court. In support he relied upon 2004 (10) SCC 745 Kiran Tandon v. Allahabad Development Authority and another. The above authority only reiterates the settled legal position that an award under Section 11 of the Act is like on offer, the reference Court has to treat the reference like a plaint in original proceedings and has to determine the market value afresh on the basis of material produced before it. The burden to prove that the compensation offered by SLAO is inadequate is upon the claimant. From the record we find that the claimants have filed certified copy of large number of sale-deeds to prove the market value of the acquired land. The reference Court after considering them discarded most of them on the ground that they either pertain to a very small piece of land or that they are in respect of the land of adjoining villages. Ultimately the reference Court placed reliance upon the exemplar sale-deed dated 27.1.1986 which was in respect of the land of the same village. Under the aforesaid sale-deed an area of 6 bigha 13 biswa 10 biswansi was transferred by Smt. Ketiki through her power of attorney holder in favour of Jagdish Prasad for a total sale consideration of Rs. 1,20,000/-. On the basis of the said sale-deed the Court below determined the market value to be not less than Rs. 19,000/- per bigha. The aforesaid sale-deed is most proximate in time and pertains to an area of over 6 bigha of land which is quite large in comparison to the total areas of 19 bigha 6 biswa 12 biswansi which was acquired. Acco