IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE, ANDHRA PRADESH AT HYDERABAD (Special Original Jurisdiction) WEDNESDAY, THE TWENTIETH DAY OF AUGUST TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT PRESENT THE HON'BLE SRI JUSTICE C.V.NAGARJUNA REDDY WRIT PETITION NO : 7750 of 2004 Between: K.Someswara Rao, S/o.Late Venkata Ramanaiah, D.No.14-2-141, Priyadarshini Colony, vikas Nagar, Gajuwaka Town & Mandal, Visakhapatnam Dist. ..... PETITIONER AND 1 Govt. of A.P.,rep.by its Secretary, Revenue, (Land Acquisition)Dept.,Secretariat, Hyderabad. 2 The Collector, Krishna, Chilakalapudi. 3 The R.D.O., Masulipatnam. 4 The Chairman,A.P.H.B., Gruhakalpa, Nampally, Hyderabad. ....RESPONDENTS Counsel for the Petitioner:MRS A.B.LALITHA FOR MR N.V.ANANTHA KRISHNA Counsel for respondents 1 to 3: AGP FOR LAND ACQUISITION Counsel for respondent No.4: NONE APPEARED. The Court made the following : O R D E R: This writ petition is ﬁled for a writ of Mandamus to declare the action of the respondents in not passing award in respect of Ac.0.30 cents of land in Survey No.207/4 in Award No.2 of 1984 dated 03-01-1984 as illegal and arbitrary. The petitioner sought for a consequential direction to pass a supplemental award for payment of compensation along with interest and additional compensation. Heard the learned counsel for the parties and perused the record. The wife of the petitioner was granted D-form patta in respect of Ac.0.30 cents of land in the above mentioned survey number. The said land along with other lands was acquired under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (for short “the Act”) in February, 1981. Advance possession was taken in the year 1982. However, when the award was passed, the said land was deleted from the award, in the year 1984. The petitioner and his wife went on making representations to the respondents, without any positive result. After failing to get relief from diﬀerent Fora like Lok Adalath, the petitioner ﬁled this writ petition, as his wife died on 07-09-2002 executing a will bequeathing the property in favour of the petitioner. In the counter-aﬃdavit ﬁled by the Revenue Divisional Oﬃcer and Land Acquisition Oﬃcer, Bandar, Krishna District, the fact that the land was assigned to the wife of the petitioner and that the same was acquired under the provisions of the Act is not disputed. The further fact that the said land was excluded from Award No.2 of 1984 is also admitted. But the only ground on which compensation was not paid was that the D-form patta dated 26-06-1974 contains a condition that the assignee shall develop the land within a period of three years and that as the same was not developed, it is deemed that the land has been resumed to the Government. In my considered view, the above mentioned reason for denying compensation to the petitioner cannot be sustained in law. The respondents have not produced a copy of the patta. Even assuming that the patta contains a condition stipulating that assignee shall develop the land within three years, unless the said condition contains a deemed resumption, the respondents cannot presume that the assignment has been deemed to have been resumed. Therefore, the purported ground of deemed resumption, on which the assignee has been denied compensation, cannot be sustained. Except the self- serving statement of the respondents that the assignee has not developed the land, no material was relied upon by the respondents in support thereof. Whether the land was developed or not was a pure question of fact which could be ascertained only after a notice was given to the assignee and an order of resumption passed. Having assigned the land, it is not open to the respondents to deny the property to the assignee without following the procedure contained in the patta conditions. As the respondents failed to show that the patta contains a condition of deemed resumption, the petitioner cannot be denied compensation. The next question is as to what is the compensation that the petitioner is entitled to. In State of Andhra Pradesh v Bondapalli Sanyasi[1], a Five-Judge Bench of this Court held that if the land is acquired through the proceedings initiated under the Act, the assignee of a DKT patta is entitled to compensation in accordance with the provisions of the Act. In the instant case, admittedly proceedings were initiated under Sections 4(1) and 6 of the Act in respect of the land in question, but subsequently the land was deleted from the award on a totally erroneous premise that the land is deemed to have been resumed. Therefore, following the judgment in Bondapalli Sanyasi (supra), the petitioner is entitled to payment of compensation on par with the owners of the land acquired under Award No.2 of 1984 dated 03-01-1984. For the above mentioned reasons, the writ petition is allowed. The respondents are directed to pass a supplemental award in terms of Award No.2 of 1984 dated 03-01-1984 in respect of the above mentioned land of the petitioner and pay compensation in accordance with the provisions of the Act including Section 34 of the Act, within a period of three (3) months from the date of receipt of a copy of this order. C.V.NAGARJUNA REDDY, J Dated 20th August, 2008 vrn [1] 2002 (2) ALD 1 (LB)