Srinagar: The High Court today expressed its displeasure at the forcible occupation of land belonging to displaced persons by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Government of India, and directed it to pay compensation to the victims.
Justice W S Nargal while hearing a petition by 92-years-old Saroop Singh and 24 others displaced from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir in 1947, said “Once a piece of land is allotted to a Displaced Person for rehabilitation under proper orders, it cannot be taken away by any manner, means or by any other agency. The whole spirit behind such a provision is that a Displaced Person, who has once been uprooted from his native place in POK due to partition, should be rehabilitated and not be uprooted again.”
The petitioner Sikhs and their ancestors had been allotted 224 Kanals and 10 Marlas of land at Chatha, Jammu, in 1953 by the State Government for their rehabilitation.
The case of the petitioners is that after the allotment of the land, they remained in its cultivating possession. The mutation in respect of the land was also attested in their favour in terms of law.
However, the said land was “forcibly occupied by the Indian Army in 1978 without granting any compensation to them.”
Justice Nargal after perusing the records found that the land has been forcibly occupied.
“The Union of India by no stretch of imagination can deprive the petitioners of their land without sanction of law. Even if it requires the whole of the said land or any part thereof for defence purpose, they may do so only by following due process of law,” the judge said.
He said “the action of the respondent — Union of India — is illegal and unconstitutional which cannot sustain the test of law in the light of the stand taken by the State Government and also the findings recorded by the various committees constituted in this regard.”
The land, he said, has been forcibly occupied without paying the rental compensation.
The bench directed the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to pay the rental compensation assessed by the State Government from 01.01.1978 to 31.03.2009 amounting to Rs. 2.49 crore to the lawful claimants within a month.
It also directed it “to assess the rental compensation w.e.f. 31.03.2009 till date in the light of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 within a period of one month from today and pay the rental amount to the lawful claimants including the petitioners.”
The court made it clear that if the rental compensation already assessed by the Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, for the period 01.01.1978 to 31.03.2009 is not made to the petitioners after verification within aforesaid period, the petitioners will be entitled to claim interest @ 6 percent per annum.
The respondents have also directed that in case the subject land is required by the Union of India or by any other agency, it shall be acquired strictly in conformity with the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2013.
In such eventuality, the compensation be paid to the petitioners after following due process of law and necessary verification, the court directed.
