Gulam Mustafa & Ors. v. the State of Maharashtra & Ors.

Judgment

The Judgment of the Court was delivered by KR1sHNA IYER, J. Brevity will do no inequity in this appeal where three points were urged but only ()Ille survives for serious scanning. The subject matter is the validity of land acquisition proceedings whereby a Municipality compulsorily purchased the appellant's land for the stated public purpose of running a country lair or market (mondha) under the Hyderaba!d Land Acquisition Act (for R short, the Act) which is closely similar to the Land Acquisition Act, 1923 (Central Act). The first charge is that the High Court dismissed the Writ Petition in limine. Seven years after the 1968 event, we cannot consider sending back the case even if there be justice in the submission. We have therefore heard counsel Shri Deshpande on his substantive grievances. The second contention is that there is no 'public purpose' to support the acquisition which is allegedly ultra vires the Municipality's powers. We disagree.

Providing village market is an obvious public purpose and a municipal facility. The fast plea which has been pressed strenuously is that the acquisition exercise is ba\l being ma/a fide-an uphill task to make out against a public body. Was this colourable exercise of power? Striking down any act for mala fide exercise of power. is a judicial reserve pQwer exercised lethally, but rarely. The charge of malafides against public bodies and authorities is more easily made than made out. It is the last refuge of a! losing litigant. Even so, we will examine the merits oil' the contention here from the point of view of the serious factors placed for our consideration. Was .this acquisition done colore ofjicii? The circumstances relied on may be examined from this standpoint. Section 5 ( 3) of the Act provides for declaration of the pnblic purpose, like s. 6 ( 3) of the Central Act. This declaration was made in 1960 and covered at least 28 acres of land belonging to the appeUant.

His counsel contends that there in no public purpose mentioned in the notifica• tion because what is stated is 'g;overnment purpose'. There is no force in this terminological deviation. The purpose has been set down as for a 'mondha' or 'country fair' which is obviously a public purpose. So counsel shifted to another shade of the same argument and stateid that 'mondha' is not a wor'd known to law and has not been definen anywhere and so such a purpose cannot be· taken cognizance of by the law. We cannot agree to tli~ linguistic game masquerading as a legal point. It is plain that a 'mondha' is a countrv fair or village market. 'Market' is defined in s. 2(20) of the Hyderabad District Municipalities Act in Wide terms, and s. 72 of the said Act enumera•es the purposes for which property may be vested in a municipality. This includes 'markets'. It inexorably follows from a ioint reading of ss.

2(20) and 72(a) that the purpose of providing a market for the townsfolk falls within the powers of a municipality. Failing here, counsel finally stressed that in any case no market for a small municipal town requires. 28 acres of land, especially because the Master Plan prepared for the Municipality had allotted l3 GULAM MUSTAFA v. Mf\HARASHTRA (Krishna Iyer, !.) only 15 acre,s for this purpose. It is not for the Court to investigate into the are_a necessary for running a market. Moreover there is no mala [ides emerging from this circumstance. What has to be established is mala fide exercise of power by the State Governmentthe acquiring authority-although the beneficiary of the acquisitiolll is etventually the Municipality. There is no scintilla of evidence suggestive of ma/us animus in Government.

At this stage Shri Deshpande complained that actually the Municipal Committee had sold away the excess land marking them out intQ separate plots for a housing colony, apart from the fact that a housing colony is a public necessity, ouce the original acquisition is valid and title has vested in the Municipality, how it uses the excess lanU is no1 concern of the original owner and cannot be the basis for invalidating the acquisition. There is no principle of law by which a valid compulsory acquisiton stands voided because long later the requiring authoritr diverts it to a public purpose other than the one stated in the s. 5(3) declaration. There is no merit in the appeal which is dismissed without costs. P.B.R . Appeal dismissed.