Supreme Court of India
UNION OF INDIA & ANR. versus BALWANT SINGH & ORS. on 3 September 2019
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[2019] 12 S.C.R.
AUNION OF INDIA & ANR.
v.
BALWANT SINGH & ORS.
(Civil Appeal Nos. 6981-6982 of 2019)
BSEPTEMBER 03, 2019
[R. F. NARIMAN AND SURYA KANT, JJ.]
National Highway Act, 1956 – s.3G(5) – Land AcquisitionAct, 1894 – s.25 – Union of India contended that the impugnedJudgment suffered from an error – It was contended that in theCimpugned judgment, the case of Madishetti Bala Ramul (D) throughLRs v. The Land Acquisition Officer was followed, which appliedonly to the Land Acquisition Act and cannot be made applicable tothe National Highways Act – Held: Union of India is right – Underthe Land Acquisition Act an award that is made by the LandAcquisition is in the nature of an offer on behalf of the governmentDand hence cannot be challenged by the government – Whereas, thescheme of the National Highways Act as disclosed by s.3G(5) isthat the amount determined by the competent authority under thesaid Act may, on application of either of the parties, if it is not soacceptable, be then determined by the Arbitrator to be appointedby the central government – Thus, matters remanded to be decidedEu/s.37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act by the High Court –In the aforesaid terms, the appeals are allowed.
Madishetti Bala Ramul (D) through LRs v. The LandAcquisition Officer[2007] 3 RCR (Civil) 455 –referred to.
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Case Law Reference
[2007] 3 RCR (Civil) 455referred toPara 2
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Civil Appeal Nos. 6981-6982 of 2019
GWith
Civil Appeal Nos. 6983-6984 of 2019.
From the Judgment and Order dated 03.02.2016 of the HighCourt of High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in FAO No.10168 of 2014 and order dated 09.11.2016 in RA-CR N o. 234-CII ofH2016 (O&M).
Mukul Rohatgi, Narender Hooda, Amit Sibal, Neeraj Kumar Jain,Sr. Advs., Alok Sangwan, Devashish Bharuka, Raghujeet S. Madan,Damanjit Singh Monga, Ms. Ankur Berry, Sunny Kadiyan, YashveerSingh Balhara, Ravi Bharuka, Mayank Sharma, Rajendra Beniwal, ShashiPal Laler, R. S. Manhas, Sonit Sinhmar, Ravi Panwar, P. N. Puri,Ms. Reeta Dewan Puri, Abhishek Puri, Paramjit Rajput, Harish Mahajan,Tripurari Ray, Balwant Singh Billowria, Parveen Kumar, Vijay PratapSingh, Vivekanand Singh, Anirudh Ray, Ms. Shilpa Singh, GauravAgrawal, Yashraj Singh Deora, Shyam Agarwal, Vinay Tripathi, AishvaryVikram, Ms. Sonal Mashankar, Surinder Singh, Satbir Singh Rathore,Arvind Gupta, Manoj Pundir, Navneet Singh, Advs. for the appearingparties.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by
R. F. NARIMAN, J.
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1. Leave granted.
2. Mr. Mukul Rohatgi, learned Senior Advocate appearing for theUnion of India, submits that the impugned judgment passed in these twocases suffers from an obvious error in that the judgment of this Court inthe case of Madishetti Bala Ramul (D) through LRsvs. The LandAcquisition Officer, 2007 (3) RCR (Civil) 455 was followed, whichjudgment applied only to the Land Acquisition Act and which cannot bemade applicable to the National Highways Act for the reason that Section3G (5) contains a scheme entirely different from and at variance fromthe scheme contained in the Land Acquisition Act.
3. Mr. Gaurav Agrawal, learned counsel and Mr. Neeraj KumarJain, learned senior counsel appearing for the respondents were not ableto seriously controvert this position. Even though there is a considerabledelay in these matters, we find that it has been condoned by this Court.M/s Gaurav Agrawal and Neeraj Kumar Jain also point out that a reviewpetition was filed which was limited only to two types of land and thepoint which Mr. Rohatgi has argued before us was not urged in the saidreview petition.
4. Having heard learned counsel for both sides, we are of theview that the arguments based on the review petition need not detain usfurther as a Special Leave Petition has been filed against the judgmentdated 03.02.2016 in which this point has been taken. Also, Mr. Rohatgi A
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Ais right in pointing out that under the Land Acquisition Act an award thatis made by the Land Acquisition Officer is in the nature of an offer onbehalf of the government and hence cannot be challenged by thegovernment - See Section 25 of the Act. The scheme of the NationalHighways Act, on the other hand, as disclosed by Section 3G (5) is thatthe amount determined by the competent authority under the said ActBmay, on application of either of the parties, if it is not so acceptable, bethen determined by the Arbitrator to be appointed by the centralgovernment.5. In this view of the matter, it is obvious that the impugnedjudgments in these two matters are incorrect and are therefore set aside.CWe remand these cases to be decided under the Section 37 jurisdictionunder the Arbitration Act by the Punjab & Haryana High Court. Theappeals are allowed in the aforesaid terms.
6. We are informed that there are a large number of casesdependent on this judgment. The Learned Chief Justice of the Punjab &DHaryana High Court is requested to constitute an appropriate bench tohear these matters at the earliest.
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Ankit Gyan
Appeals allowed.
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