PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa has rejected the plea by the village panchayat of Velsao-Pale-Issorcim, who had challenged the railway authorities for undertaking work within the jurisdiction of the village panchayat without permission from the local panchayat.
In its judgement, the High Court has adopted the reasoning from a judgement it had passed based on a similar petition by the Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott, Chandor that had also challenged the jurisdiction of the railway authorities to undertake work without permissions from local authorities.
“Most of the contentions urged in the petition are entirely covered by our decision in Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott. Even the argument now raised was considered and rejected by us. There was a reference to the Constitutional status of Panchayats, though there may not have been a direct reference to District planning committees,” the High Court ruled.
The village panchayat had objected the railway authorities undertaking works concerning the railway track doubling project within areas of the panchayat jurisdiction. The panchayat contended that permissions from the panchayat are necessary before the railways can undertake any such works,
particularly now that the panchayats have been conferred a constitutional status by the 73rd amendment to the Constitution of India.
In its earlier judgement passed in the case filed by the Ganv Bhavancho Ekvott, the High Court had ruled that the Railways Act was supreme.
“Given these wide ranging powers conferred by the Parliament on a railway administration and bearing in mind the impact that the non-obstante clause found at the beginning of section 11 of the Railways Act has on other enactments, barring only the Railways Act and land acquisition laws for a public purpose, it is too late in the day for the petitioners to contend that notwithstanding the presence of section 11 of the Railways Act in the statute book conferring such wide ranging powers with overriding effect, the railway authorities, i.e, SWR and RVNL, are required to obtain building permissions from the village panchayat under the Panchayat Act or other permissions under the other stated State legislation,” the High Court had ruled.
“If we were to accept the contention of the petitioners, we would either have to totally ignore the provisions contained in section 11 or to render section 11 completely ineffective without even outlawing it,” the High Court had also said.
