I vividly remember this case. Large tract of village land was acquired by State Government for building a Dam.
Since this was for Public Purpose, villagers were bound to sell their land to Government as per law of Land Acquisition Act.
The Collector offered price of Rs. 3/- per square meter of land to villagers.
The Villagers filed cases in Court.
The District Judge appeared to be a fearless judge.
He made sarcastic remark in judgement, "In 3 Rs./- you cannot buy even a tea from a roadside vendor. And government is offering only Rs.3/- per square meter of land ! This is not permissible. If you go to buy even one square meter of cloth, you have to pay rupees 300/-. Whereas, here government here wants to buy LAND, not cloth. I order government to pay Rs.300/- per square meter of land to these owners-villagers."
The Government was not happy. It went in appeal to High Court. Appeal was heard after many years. High Court dismissed appeal of Government.
Then Government filed appeal in Supreme Court. Here again after many years appeal was decided. Supreme Court reduced amount from Rs.300/- to Rs.240/-.
The villagers had to fought in court for about 20 years to get this amount.
For all these years, the Government was liable to pay only 9 percent interest per year. If Government had to borrow these amount from market for 20 years, it might have to pay 40% interest.!
MORAL OF STORY
It pays to drag rightful people into litigation. Wrongful people find themselves rewarded at the end of litigation. ...As you can see above.
Haresh Raichura
6/11/14
Copyright : Haresh Raichura 2014 All Rights Reserved.
