The court's jurisdiction in contempt proceedings is limited to ensuring compliance with the writ court order and does not extend to adjudicating the quantum of compensation.

JUDGMENT :

Rohit Ranjan Agarwal, J.

1. Heard Sri Madhup Viswas, learned counsel for the applicant and Sri Neeraj Dube, learned counsel for the opposite party.

2. These connected contempt applications have been filed under Section 12 of Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 for punishing the opposite party for not complying the order of writ Court dated 04.05.2017 passed in Writ-C No. 19304 of 2017, requiring the opposite party to complete the entire proceedings in respect of Plot No. 224 and payment being made.

3. Contempt Application No. 4409 of 2017 is being taken up as the leading case and the facts of the said case in brief is being disclosed as under for better appreciation:-

4. The applicants before this Court are the patta holders of Gata No. 224 (old Gata No. 146) in Mauja-Bijauli, Gram Panchayat-Bijauli, District-Etawah. The National Highway Authority of India (hereinafter called as ‘NHAI’) needed the land for road widening of NH-2, and thus a publication was made under Section 3-A of the National Highways Act, 1956 (hereinafter called as ‘Act of 1956’) for the acquisition of various plots. Initially, the Gata No. 224, 429, 608 and 642 were also included but no award was made in respect of these Gata numbers on 18.09.2014 as these being Government lands and were given to various tenure holders on lease.

5. The present dispute is in regard to Gata No. 224 whose lease was granted to applicant of the leading case as well as the connected matters by the Land Management Committee in the year 1997 which was approved by the Sub-Divisional Officer on 02.07.1997. As the land of applicants were not part of the acquisition proceedings and were not paid compensation and was taken for road widening, they approached this Court through Writ Petition No. 16985 of 2016, which was disposed of with a direction to file a representation which was to be decided by the authorities. Since the order of writ Court was not complied with, contempt proceedings were drawn by the applicant being Contempt Application No. 4192 of 2016 which was dismissed as infructuous on the affidavit filed by opposite party on the ground that the Gata No. 224 was not part of the acquisition. The said order was challenged through Writ-C No. 14227 of 2017 by one Smt. Shanti Devi and on 18.04.2017, the writ Court directed that entire proceedings in respect of plot be completed and payment be made to the tenure holders. Subsequently, the present applicant also filed writ petition which was decided in terms of order dated 18.04.2017 on 04.05.2017.

6. As the order of writ Court was not complied with, the present contempt proceedings have been initiated at the behest of the applicants against the opposite party.

7. Learned counsel appearing for the applicants submitted that by virtue of Section 131-B of the U.P.Z.A. and L.R. Act, applicants have become Bhumidhar with transferable rights after completion of 10 years in possession over the land which was allotted to them in the year 1997 and are entitled for fair compensation according to various Government Orders. He then contended that circle rate issued by Collector of the year 2017 provides that the land which is situated in abadi, the market value is Rs.11,000/-per square meter and the respondent authorities are only paying Rs.2,000/-per square meter. According to him, the authorities are not complying the order of writ Court and are flouting the same and for last 8 years no compensation amount has been paid to them.

8. Sri Neeraj Dube, learned counsel appearing for NHAI submitted that Gata No. 224 is a Government land and under the earlier policy dated 10.04.2017, only compensation for the structure standing over the Government land was payable. However, as the policy was amended subsequently on 06.02.2018, now the compensation is paid on the land as well as the structure standing over it. According to him, Project Director had required the Additional District Magistrate, Etawah to submit a report, who on verification found that no sup