Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Mar 14: A Division Bench of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh comprising Justice Tashi Rabstan and Justice M A Chowdhary has held that courts are not equipped with the necessary expertise to decide feasibility and viability of any project and interference without noticing malafides on the part of concerned authorities will impact the developmental works.
The Division Bench was hearing a petition filed by inhabitants of village Plangarh Kote in Thannamandi area of Rajouri district seeking direction to the respondents to construct the road from Rajouri to Thannamandi strictly as per original indent/Detailed Project Report whereby width of the road has been sanctioned as 24 meters throughout.
The petitioners were seeking further direction to the respondents not to reduce the width of the road from 24 meters to 12 meters within kilometers 12.910 to 17.680 which area caters to the villages of Plangarh, Kote, Badakhana and Khabala.
After hearing counsel for the petitioners and respondents, the Division Bench observed, “court cannot on its own adjudicate as to whether the road alignment as proposed by the technical team is feasible or not as the official respondents have examined the issue and found the objections raised by the petitioners technically not feasible”.
“The courts are not equipped with necessary expertise to decide upon the issues relating to the viability and feasibility of any project, which in fact are the technical matters and the decision is taken by people equipped with the necessary expertise”, the DB said, adding “to decide as to on which side of the road, the land should be acquired, the court cannot super impose its opinion in the matter. Any interference in the case would delay the strategic project”.
“The allegations of malafides alleged by the petitioner qua the whole process of acquisition and road widening also has been very well dealt with by Deputy Commissioner, Rajouri leaving no scope for this court to intervene and interfere”, the DB said, adding “it is worth reiterating that the consistent view of the Constitutional courts in the matters of land acquisitions has been that the viability or feasibility in the process of acquisition does not fall with the domain of courts unless it exfacie is found to be contrary to law or is tainted with palpable malafides”.
With these observations, the DB refused to interfere and dismissed the petition.
The case before the Division Bench was that the Border Roads Organization undertook the task of widening/four laning of Rajouri-Thannamandi-Surankote Road having the length of approximately 57 Kms. Due to socio-economic development in the area the traffic has considerably increased and the road was in deplorable condition having big potholes throughout Rajouri to Thannamandi causing grave hardships and inconvenience to the civilians and Military.
Accordingly, the proposal/indent for improvement and widening/double laning of the road was placed initially from Kms 3.900 to 25.200 on 24.07.2019 before the Revenue Authorities for the acquisition of land. Some of the land owners in order to get their lands out of purview of acquisition filed a Writ Petition bearing No. WP(C) No. 4193/2009 before the High Court and the Writ Petition was disposed of by virtue of judgment/order dated 15.11. 2019 with an observation that in case the process initiated for acquisition of land under the Land Acquisition Act, 1999 is to proceed further, the land owners shall be afforded opportunity of hearing in support of the objections filed by them under Section 5A of the Act.
Thereafter, the respondents decided to change the alignment of the road by reducing the width from 24 meters to 12 meters within Km 12.910 to Km 17.680. The local residents filed a Writ Petition before the court bearing WP(C) No. 1621/2021 challenging the action of the respondents. The Writ Petition came upon for consideration before the court on 13.08.2021 and on the said date the same was disposed of with a direction to the respondents to consider and decide the Legal Notice served by the petitioner/local inhabitants.
Thereafter towards the implementation of order dated 13.08.2021 passed by the court, the respondent issued the impugned order No. Coll/Def/2021/1216-20 dated 15.09.2021 by rejecting the case of the petitioners.
The respondents submitted before the Division Bench that petitioner’s plea to increase the width of the road from 12 Meters to 24 Meters within Kms 12.910 to Kms 17.960 is not possible as the acquisition in question has already been completed and the site has also been handed over to the contractor for execution.
Further, the DB was apprised that petitioners are encroachers of the land owned by Irrigation Department, which has issued notices for removal of the encroachments as such the petitioners with malafide intentions and in order to stall the process of acquisition filed petition with ulterior motives.
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