Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, 1978 – s.3– In Nagaland, for the establishment of a new village on a land which ancestrally belongs to another village, the prevailing custom requires a ‘No Objection Certificate’ of the parent/ancestral village – Said custom is recognized in the O.M. dated 22.03.1996 – Government of Nagaland issued another O.M. dated 01.10.2005 which introduced an additional criteria/condition in the process of village recognition i.e., the requirement of a public notice providing a 30 day period to the public to register their objections, if any, regarding the specific village which is sought to be recognised – Division Bench of the High Court affirmed the judgment of the Single Judge directing the State authorities to take steps for the issuance of formal order(s) for the recognition of the respondent no. 1 village – Whether all the necessary conditions/criteria for the issuance of formal order(s) of recognition of the respondent no.1-village as per the O.M.’s dated 22.03.1996 and 01.10.2005 respectively were fulfilled: Held: 1.1 It is the bounden duty of the State and its relevant authorities to adequately and appropriately consider any and all such objections which may be raised by the interested parties in response to the public notice issued by them, provided that they are lodged within the stipulated time-period – Otherwise, the very object of issuing a public notice would be vitiated. [Para 49]
1.2 In the present case, the said public notice was issued on 13.10.2009 and vide communication dated 16.10.2009, the appellant had raised its objections to the recognition of the respondent no. 1 village by contending that the respondent no. 1 village is in fact sought to be established on their land – The objection is said to have also been published in a local daily on 18.10.2009 – The Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Dimapur vide its letter dated 08.11.2009 had directed the appellant to furnish more comprehensive details along with the relevant boundaries and records to incidate as to how the respondent no. 1 village would fall within their land – The authorities further stipulated that, if the same is not provided within a period of 7 days, their objection dated 16.10.2009 would stand nullified. [Para 49]
1.3 On the ensuing day i.e., on 09.11.2009, the appellant sent a reply providing details supporting their claim to the Deputy Commissioner, Dimapur – It is unclear as to what extent the aforesaid communication made by the appellant was considered by the Deputy Commissioner, Dimapur before additional steps were taken to forward the proposal for recognition of the respondent no. 1 village to the government. [Para 49]
1.4 The State of Nagaland has not made a single averment regarding the merits of the claim made by the appellant over the land in which the respondent no. 1 village is situated – It is not the case of the State of Nagaland that the claims made by the appellant are absolutely baseless and devoid of merit as well – Therefore, it cannot be contended, both by the State of Nagaland and by the respondent nos. 1 and 2 respectively, that the conditions/criteria laid down in the two O.M.’s, especially the latter O.M. dated 01.10.2005, were fulfilled in the present case. [Para 49]
1.5 The procedure envisaged in the two O.M.’s dated 22.03.1996 and 01.10.2005 respectively, was not complied with in the present case – Furthermore, the inter-district boundary dispute had no nexus whatsoever with the issue of recognition of the respondent no. 1 village – The decision of the High Court insofar as the observations made regarding the compliance with the aforesaid two O.M.’s are concerned, is set aside solely because the High Court while passing the impugned decision, was not alive to the case of the appellant herein. [Para 72]
1.6 State authorities to re-issue a public notice regarding the recognition of the respondent no. 1 village and exhaustively consider all the objections which may be raised from every quarter, including that of the appellant herein – A period of six months is provided to the State to complete the said process and take a call on whether recognition must be granted to the respondent no. 1 village or not. [Para 73]
Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, 1978 – Whether the existence of an “inter-district boundary dispute” was a valid reason to keep the recognition of the respondent no. 1 village in abeyance – The demarcation of the inter-district boundary between the districts of Kohima (where the appellant village is located) and Dimapur (where the respondent village is allegedly located) and its nexus with the recognition of village(s) was first brought to the fore by the Ezong Committee Report – The broad consensus amongst the concerned parties was to place all the villages affiliated with the ‘Sumi’ tribe (to which respondent no. 1 village is affiliated) in the Dimapur District and those affiliated to the ‘Zeliangrong’ tribe (to which the appellant belongs) under the Kohima district (now Peren): Held: The inter-district boundary dispute had no nexus whatsoever with the issue of recognition of the respondent no. 1 village – On a consideration of the recent report of the Cabinet sub-committee, which comes as a relatively recent development, the stance of the State blaming the inter-district boundary dispute for the non-recognition of the respondent no. 1 deserves to be viewed strictly – When the Ezong Committee Report was published in the year 2002, the respondent no. 1 village was not inaugurated or established yet – Hence, there is every possibility that the State authorities attributed the persisting inter-district dispute as a bona fide reason for keeping the recognition of the respondent no. 1 village in abeyance, largely due to the absence of clarity on the bounds of the respondent no. 1 village and whether it fell within the disputed area or not – However, post the year 2021, i.e., it was obvious that the boundary dispute had nothing whatsoever to do with the case of the respondent no. 1 village, especially since it’s the case of the State themselves that the respondent no. 1 village is situated approx. 3.7 kms from the buffer-zone/area – State authorities to take a final call on the issue of recognition of the respondent no. 1 village with the utmost urgency and with strict adherence to the procedure. [Paras 63, 69, 72] Judicial Review – Cabinet decisions – Scope, stated. [Paras 56-60]
Nagaland Village and Area Councils Act, 1978 – s.3 – ‘village’ – Conditions to be fulfilled, to be recognised as a village. [Paras 43, 44]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Divya Pandey. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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