The main legal point established in the judgment is the invalidity of the invocation of the urgency clause under Section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act and the discretion of the acquiring Authority to retain the entire land acquired without obligation to return any part of the land to the landowners.

ORDER :

1. Leave granted in all the Special Leave Petitions.

2. The challenge in this bunch of Civil Appeals is against the order of the High Court of Allahabad which had negatived the challenge made by the landowners against acquisition of land for the public purpose, namely, “planned development of Ghaziabad Development Authority for residential colonies”.

3. The notifications under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) (six in numbers) were issued on 16th October, 2004 (five notifications) and 11th November, 2004 (one notification) and published on 22nd October, 2004 (five notifications) and 9th December, 2004 respectively. The urgency clause under Section 17(1) read with Section 17(4) of the Act was invoked and hearing of objections under Section 5A of the Act was dispensed with.

4. There were interim orders passed in the writ petitions directing stay of dispossession. The earliest of such order was dated 22nd May, 2006. No award was passed possibly because of the pendency of the writ petitions and the interim orders passed therein.

5. Contending, inter alia, that the invocation of urgency clause was not justified and that the acquisition proceedings had lapsed under Section 11A of the Act as no award was published within a period of two years from the date of the publication of the notifications, the writ petitions in question were filed along with additional ground that compensation under Section 17(3A) of the Act to the extent of eighty per cent of the compensation for such land was also not paid which invalidates the acquisitions.

6. The twin issues, namely, the first with regard to lapsing of the proceedings under Section 11A of the Act in a case where Section 17(1) read with Section 17(4) has been invoked and, secondly, the consequence of the non-payment of compensation under Section 17(3A) on an acquisition proceeding are presently pending before a larger Bench of this Court on the basis of a reference made in Delhi Airtech Services Private Limited and another versus State of Uttar Pradesh and Another, (2011) 9 SCC 354. This Court, therefore, for the purposes of the present cases, will consider it expedient to confine its scrutiny to the question as to whether the invocation of urgency clause under Section 17 was justified in the facts of the present cases. This is with the consent of the parties. Even otherwise, if the Court is to hold the said issue in favour of the land owners the consequential finding would be determinative of the controversy between the parties.

7. It will not be necessary to burden this order by a detailed reference to the numerous precedents available as to the scope and ambit of the jurisdiction of the Court to interfere with what is essentially a subjective satisfaction of the Authority for invoking the urgency clause under Section 17. The power is extremely circumscribed and what facts would justify the invocation of the said power can only be visualized illustratively and not exhaustively. In the present cases, from the proceedings of the acquisition prior to the issuance of Notification under Section and particularly from a certificate setting out the grounds for invoking the urgency clause it appears that the sole ground for the same is to prevent unauthorized construction which, if made, would make it difficult to take possession of the land. This is evident from the document described as 'Certificate for invoking of Section 17' dated 4th March, 2004 signed by the Officer on Special Duty, Ghaziabad Development Authority, Ghaziabad, the contents of which are as follows:

“'Certificate for invoking of Section 17'

This is to certify that for the planned development of the city of Ghazibad, the expeditious acquisition of the proposed land of Rasoolpur Yaqootpur is required, because this is a scheme of public interest and any delay may cause unauthorized construction at work place, after which possession of the land would be difficult.

Therefore, for the ac