IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE, ANDHRA PRADESH AT HYDERABAD THURSDAY, THE TWENTY SEVENTH DAY OF MARCH TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT PRESENT HON'BLE SRI ANIL R. DAVE, THE CHIEF JUSTICE and THE HON'BLE MR JUSTICE R.SUBHASH REDDY WRIT APPEAL NO : 5 of 2008 (Writ Appeal under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent against the Order dated 03/12/2007 in WP NO : 25679 OF 2007 on the file of the High Court.) Between: 1 Teegala Lakshmi Nalini w/o.Srinivas R/o.Dharmavaram Tallapudi Mandal West Godavari District 2 Teegala Lakshmi W/o.Venkata Raju R/o.Dharmavaram Tallapudi Mandal West Godavari District ..... APPELLANT(S) AND 1 The District Collector, West Godavari District 2 The Revenue Divisonal Officer (Land Acquisition officer) jangareddigudem, W.G.District .....RESPONDENT(S) Counsel for the Appellant:MR.MEHERCHAND NOORI Counsel for the Respondent No.: GP FOR LAND ACQUISITION The Court made the following : JUDGMENT: (Per Anil R. Dave, CJ) Being aggrieved by the judgment delivered by the learned single Judge in W.P.No. 25679 of 2007, dated 3-12-2007, this appeal has been filed by the appellants whose lands have been acquired by the State so as to implement a housing scheme, namely Indiramma programme phase-I. The grievance, which was ventilated before the learned single Judge by the appellants, who were the petitioners, was that without holding proper enquiry under Section 5-A of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (for short ‘the Act’) and, therefore, the proceedings are vitiated. The same arguments have been advanced by the learned Advocate before this Court. We have heard the learned Advocates and have perused the record pertaining to the petition. We are not in agreement with the submissions made by the learned Advocate that proper enquiry under Section 5-A of the Act has not been made. We also do not agree with the submission that the lands could not have been acquired in view of the fact that the appellants are small farmers. It is true that it is a general policy of the State that as far as possible the lands of small farmers should not be acquired but that policy may not be followed in all cases. The submission of the learned Advocate that someone by name Gopala Krishna is having more land than the appellants and therefore lands of the appellants be not acquired is not well founded for the reason that on earlier occasion land of the said person had already been acquired. Moreover from the record, we find that the family holding of the appellants is more than 11-00 acres. In the circumstances, it cannot be said that the appellants are small farmers, because one has to look at the holdings of the family at the time when the land is to be acquired by the State for having a housing scheme. The learned Advocate has submitted that the learned single Judge should have called for the record and perused the same instead of relying upon the counter filed by the Government authorities. In our opinion, it may not be necessary in each case to call for the record. The court may call for the record in a case it entertains any suspicion and there is no reason to believe the counter-affidavit filed by the Government authorities is not correct. For the aforestated reasons, in our opinion, the learned single Judge has rightly not interfered with the acquisition proceedings. We do not find any illegality in the order passed by the learned single Judge and, therefore, the appeal is dismissed with no order as to costs. ANIL R. DAVE, CJ R. SUBHASH REDDY, J 27th March, 2008 GRR To 1. 2.2 CD copies