Patna High Court, Division Bench (Ashutosh Kumar, ACJ and Partha Sarthy, J), oral judgment dated 10-02-2025, disposing of L.P.A No.1259 of 2024 (along with I.A. No. 1 of 2024), C.W.J.C. No.4961 of 2022 and contempt M.J.C. No. 2175 of 2023 concerning the siting of a Rail Over Bridge (ROB) in the District of Saharsa. The 740-day delay in the appeal filed by officials of Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam Limited was condoned. The writ petitioner had sought shifting/redesign of the ROB alignment to spare Saharsa's main market places; the learned Single Judge directed reconsideration (meetings were held in the petitioner's absence) and, although the Railway Administration found the petitioner's suggestions infeasible for reasons of safety and durability, kept the writ petition pending while simultaneously entertaining a contempt petition. Holding (i) that a mandamus can issue only to enforce a right and not to adjudicate rights - the petitioner's plea of an 'acquisition under ambush' under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 read with Article 300(A) was never the prayer in the writ petition - and (ii) that technical decisions of technocrats, taken on informed inputs, cannot be substituted by a court or a writ petitioner, the Bench noted that the petitioner's views were considered and rejected as unviable and unfeasible even at greater land-acquisition cost. Observing that, absent any stay order, it could not see why construction had stalled, the Bench ordered all three proceedings closed and consigned to give the litigation a decent quietus. No precedent was cited; the statutory references occurred in counsel's submissions, not in the Court's ruling.
