- (1.)These ten appeals arise from the judgments in land acquisition cases decided by the Subordinate Judge's Court, Palghat. These relate to properties acquired for the same purpose under the same notification and the cases were disposed of by the court below by a common judgment. The notification under S.3(1) of the Kerala Land Acquisition Act was on 8-10-1963. The lands were acquired for the construction of an approach road to the Railway overbridge at Olavakkode.
(2.)There are several questions arising in these appeals and therefore we will deal with particular questions which are common atleast to some of these appeals, first.
(3.)Some of the lands acquired are paddy lands and some are dry lands which could be used as house sites. These have been considered differently by the court below and in regard to the house sites the value has been awarded on the basis of value of similar lands while in regard to paddy lands value has been awarded on the basis of capitalisation of the income from these lands. The report of the commissioner Ext. C1 has been relied on by the court below for finding out the income from the paddy lands. Though there was a contention before the court below that even the paddy lands should be considered as potential house sites and their value determined accordingly the court below has not chosen to accept this and according to us, rightly. On that there is no appeal at the instance of the parties. In the case of the paddy land the only question is whether the capitalisation of income at 20 times to determine the market value is correct. In the case of dry lands the main question is whether the land value determined at Rs. 315.76 per cent is excessive. There are also claims for damages for severance of property which have been allowed by the court below. That is disputed in some of the appeals. There are other minor aspects also to which we will refer in due course.