Allahabad High Court: In a batch of public interest litigations filed by few villagers of mainly opposing construction of water tank and in one case construction of RCC Centre, on the land reserved in their village for ‘Charagaah’, ‘Gadahi’, ‘Naveen Parti’, ‘Khalihaan’ or other public purposes, Saurabh Shyam Shamshery, J. held that there is no merit in challenging the construction of the water tank and RCC center, as these projects serve the interests of the villagers. It noted that the land designated for these purposes constitutes a small portion of the overall land and does not render it unsuitable for use. Furthermore, since no Bhumidhari rights are established, the bar under Section 77 of the U.P. Revenue Code does not apply.
The State asserts that an exercise was conducted to identify suitable locations for constructing water tanks. Following this assessment and based on a resolution from the Gram Sabha, appropriate land was designated for the project. Construction has commenced, with some villages already completed, utilizing taxpayer funds.
Concerning the correction in revenue record, the Court noted that no proceedings were undertaken either by Gram Sabha concerned or petitioner, therefore, at this stage, the Court refused to enter into the said dispute. However, it said that in case construction has not been commenced and it is in the middle of said land, the project can be relooked so that it may be shifted to a corner, if other requirements are satisfied otherwise it may be made sure that construction of water tank may not render the land, if used as a Charagaah.
The Court concluded that since there is no change of Bhumidhari rights, therefore, on basis of resolution of Gram Sabha if State has taken a decision to use a very small part of land for the purpose of construction of water tank or RCC Centre, out of the land marked for the purpose of Charagaah, Naveen Parti, Khalihaan etc. the bar of Section 77 of U.P. Revenue Code would not come in the way, except if it is shown that there is mala fide, which is not the case in present PILs.
The Court mentioned that the petitioners have not come up with very specific case that land which is reserved for the purpose of Charagaah, Khalihaan etc. was earlier used for said purpose only since in some of the case it is used for marriage functions or playground also, therefore, objection on construction of water tank is nothing but an objection for the sake of it only.
The Court after interacting with Pradhans which includes two women, noted that none of the Pradhan knew about their functions, as mentioned in Section 15 of U.P. Panchayat Raj Act, 1947.
Thus, while disposing of all the public interest litigations, the Court directed the department concerned to initiate some training programme for Pradhans within a period of three months from the date of this order, either on basis of Cluster or Commissionarate to make aware Pradhans, specifically women, about their rights and functions and to discourage concept of Pradhanpati.
The Court directed that a copy of the order be forwarded to the Principal Secretary of the Panchayat Raj Department, Government of U.P., Lucknow, for compliance.
[Ambika Yadav v. State of UP, 2024 SCC OnLine All 6274, decided on 23-10-2024]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For Petitioners: S/Sri Hirdesh Kumar Yadav, Madan Mohan Srivastava, Ram Bahadur Singh, Suneel Kumar Mishra, Vijay Kumar, Kunwar Bahadur Srivastava, Janardan Shukla, Udai Shankar Chauhan, Advocates
For Respondents: S/Sri Manish Goyal, Additional Advocate General assisted by J.N. Maurya, Chief Standing Counsel and Ravi Anand Agarwal, Rajesh Kumar Tripathi, Standing Counsels; and, Bhupendra Kumar Tripathi, Hari Narayan Singh, Rameshwar Prasad Shukla, A.K. Pandey, Pankaj Kumar Gupta, Arun Kumar Pandey, Sudhir Bharti and Bhupendra Kumar Tripathi, Advocates