2006 (2) TMI 666

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....Section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act and remanded the case to the Reference Court for fresh determination of the market value of the acquired land. Briefly, the facts are that a large tract of land was acquired vide a notification dated 14th August, 1987 under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act. The acquired land falls within the municipal limits of the city of Meerut (U.P.). The Special Land Acquisition Officer (SLAO) noted the potentiality of the acquired land for purposes of building activity in his award dated 22nd February, 1990. He however, fixed the market value of the acquired land at Rs. 30/- per square yard. A reference under Section 18 of the Act at the instance of the claimants was decided by the learned District Judge, ....

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....nation, the parties would have right of appeal to the High Court against such an order. In order to avoid this extra burden on the parties as well as on the court, it would have been more appropriate that the High Court should have decided the matter itself rather than remand it to the Reference Court. We may note here that before this Court also neither party expressed any desire to lead further evidence. The case had to be decided simply on basis of material already on record. On merits the learned counsel submits with reference to the impugned judgment of the High Court that only two reasons have been given by the High Court for setting aside the order of the Reference Court and remanding the case back to it. First reason is that exem....

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....nce Court. Regarding the second point that exemplars of the appellant before us were not taken into consideration, again, the High Court is factually wrong and this mistake appears to have resulted from the fact that the judgment of the Reference Court was not properly brought to the notice of the High Court. The Reference Court has referred to the exemplars of the acquiring authority but has observed that since they have not been proved on record, they cannot be looked into. The learned counsel for the acquiring authority was unable to say that this observation of the Reference Court was factually incorrect nor he could show that the exemplars filed by his client had been proved on record. In fact we requested him to show these exemplars t....