By the Court.—This is a writ petition pertaining to land acquisition of certain plots of village-Harampur, Pargana-Loni, Tehsil-District-Ghaziabad assailed on the ground that the dispensation of inquiry under Section 5A under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 has been made against the material on record without therebeing any urgency and without inviting/entertaining objections of such persons who were interested and had purchased the land and were in occupation thereof. Thus, the invoking of Section 17 of the 1894 Act has been challenged on various contentions. The said issue is on the merits of the claim.

2. An objection had been raised with regard to the locus of the petitioners for maintaining the writ petition. The counter-affidavit of the respondent No. 4, the body for whom the land had been acquired for industrial development in paragraph No. 4, had raised the issue of locus and also alleged that even if there were members of the petitioner No. 1- Association, no Court fee had been paid on their behalf. A supplementary counter-affidavit was also filed on 5th January, 2008 by the said respondent in response to the supplementary-affidavit of the petitioners dated 17.12.2007 where a list of alleged 291 members of the petitioner No. 1-Association was appended. Under the orders of the Court, the Court fee of 291 persons who were claimed by the petitioner No. 1 to be members was deposited. This deposit of Court fee on 16.4.2008 was made in terms of the final judgment in the writ petition dated 29th January, 2008 whereby the notifications were quashed and the writ petition was allowed. Thus, the Court fee came to be deposited after the judgment in the present writ petition was pronounced on 29th January, 2008. The respondent No. 4 agreived by the quashing of the proceedings in the background aforesaid filed SLP No. 14421 of 2008 (Civil Appeal No. 601 of 2012) that was allowed by Hon’ble the Apex Court on 17th January, 2012 by the following judgment:-

“Leave granted.

2. We have heard Mr. R.P. Bhat, learned senior counsel for the appellant, and Mr. S.K. Dubey, learned counsel for the respondent No. 1.

3. In 1997, the appellant made proposal to the State Government for acquisition of 74.84 acres land for the purposes of industrial development in the name of Tronica City, Ghaziabad. Based on that proposal, the State Government issued notification under Section 4 of the Land 2 Acquisition Act, 1894 (for short, ‘Act’) proposing acquisition of 74.84 acres which was published in the Official Gazette on April 16, 2003. The State Government also invoked urgency clause and thereby dispensed with the enquiry under Section 5-A of the Act. The declaration under Section 6 of the Act was issued on August 30, 2003. It is the case of the appellant that thereafter notices under Section 9 of the Act were issued to the concerned owners on September 25, 2003. The objections were filed by the concerned owners on October 13, 2003 regarding rate of compensation. The Collector approved the rate on February 27, 2004. In between March 29, 2004 and June 8, 2004, the compensation was disbursed to the concerned owners and thereafter the concerned owners handed over the possession to the Land Acquisition Officer on October 20, 2004.

4. It was then that the respondent No. 1 Sunder Garden Welfare Association (for short, ‘Association’) comprising of 291 members, filed a Writ Petition, being Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 53984 of 2004, before the Allahabd High Court. In the Writ Petition, the Association set up the case that they had purchased the land bearing plots Nos. 496, 497, 544, 501, 500, 578, 502, 504, 505, 498, 536, 538, 539 and 541 situate in village Harampur, Loni, Tehsil and District Ghaziabad, which after sub-division were distributed to its members. It is the 3 case of the Association that the above land was bhumidhar land and free from all encumbrances. It was avered that the members of the Association have got their houses constructed over t