Hon'ble Judges/Coram:
Vikramajit Sen and Abhay Manohar Sapre

JUDGMENT

Vikramajit Sen, J.

1. The Appeal before us involves an acquisition of land Under Section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (L.A. Act for brevity). The Respondent State initiated acquisition proceedings in 1981 by Notifications Under Section 4 and Section 6 of the L.A. Act, both dated 25.3.1981, invoking the urgency provisions contained in Section 17. The operation of Section 5A was simultaneously made inapplicable by resorting to Section 17(4). Possession of the land was taken by the Respondent State after almost five months on 20.8.1981. The land has subsequently been declared to be a 'Protected Forest' as envisaged in Section 29 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927 as per Notification dated 4.9.1990. Thereafter, proceedings were once again initiated by the Respondent State vide another Section 4 Notification dated 24.5.1995. This was followed by a Notification dated 17.8.1996 issued under the urgency provisions of Section 17, whereby Section 5A was yet again dispensed with. The Appellant landowner challenged these proceedings by way of a writ petition. The High Court found that since the same land for which acquisition proceedings had initially commenced invoking the emergency provisions fourteen years ago was being re-acquired once again for an unspecified public purpose, there was clearly non-application of mind by the Respondent State and the action was mala fide in law. The writ petition came to be allowed on 22.7.1998 and has subsequently attained finality. It is pertinent to note that the Respondent State, in its counter affidavit in that matter, stated that it was initiating fresh acquisition proceedings because the 1981 acquisition had lapsed due to the delay in publishing the Award. On 17.11.2003, the Respondent State took steps to annul the second proceedings by attempting to rely on Section 48 with the objective to withdraw from the acquisition. Subsequently, the Appellant filed another writ petition seeking the issuance of a direction commanding the Respondent State to release the land in question and hand over its possession to the Appellant. A writ petition giving rise to CWJC No. 15767 of 2004 was also filed by the Divisional Forest Officer challenging the action of the Respondent State in endeavouring to withdraw from the acquisition proceedings. The Forest Officer also sought a direction restraining the Authorities from dispossessing the Forest Department from the land. A Public Interest Litigation also came to be filed by one Sunil Kumar Singh, a self proclaimed social activist, with the intent and purpose of protecting and pr........