Composite land acquisition notifications: stay periods may be excluded from Section 6 limitation, but relief confined to writ petitioners

In a composite land acquisition notification, the three-year limit for a Section 6(1) declaration is computed by excluding any period during which a relevant stay order remained in force under Explanation II. A stay in connected writ petitions may extend the benefit of exclusion where the notification and declaration are common and the order is not confined to specific parties. However, where a later quashing order expressly limits relief to the writ petitioners before the court, non-petitioners cannot automatically rely on it. On that basis, the Section 6(1) declaration was held not barred as against the appellants, and their challenge failed.

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Issues: Whether the declaration under Section 6(1) of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 was barred by the proviso on the ground that it was published beyond three years from the Section 4(1) notification, and whether stay orders obtained in connected writ petitions enured to the benefit of the appellants who had not separately obtained stay.

Analysis: The notification under Section 4(1) was a common notification covering multiple villages, and the declaration under Section 6(1) was issued after the expiry of three years. The determinative question was whether the period during which stay orders were operating in connected matters had to be excluded under Explanation II to Section 6(1). The Court treated the stay orders as inhibiting further acquisition proceedings and accepted that, where the notification and declaration were composite and the court had not confined the stay to particular persons, the benefit of the stay could extend beyond the immediate petitioners. However, the Court also noted that the later Division Bench order had expressly limited the quashing of the Section 6 declaration to the writ petitioners before it. In that situation, the appellants could not claim automatic benefit from that quashing, particularly as they had not filed objections under Section 5-A and the declaration had not been quashed in toto.

Conclusion: The declaration under Section 6(1) was not barred as against the appellants, and the challenge to its validity failed.

Ratio Decidendi: In a composite land acquisition notification, the limitation for making a declaration under Section 6(1) is to be computed by excluding the period during which a relevant stay order remained in force, but a quashing order expressly confined to the writ petitioners before the court does not automatically invalidate the declaration for non-petitioners.

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