on 20-04-1987. The said reasoning cannot be sustained. The report cannot loose its value just because it is prepared in the year 1978. The statement of the claimants was also ignored. The expert report as well as the statement of the claimants was discarded in all the cases. It is not denied that the Arbitrator has not taken into consideration the fact that the Government valuer had wrongly applied depreciation. It is a well settled principle of law, as laid down in the judgment of Hon'ble the Apex Court, titled as State of Kerala v. Chehala Lonoppan Palu etc. U.J. (S.C.) (1979) 78 which was further relied on by the judgment of this Court, in the case of Union of India vs. Bachan Singh Revenue Law Reporter 1989(2) 140, wherein it was held that besides the imposition of cut on account of `depreciation', the court even chose to reduce the compensation as worked out by Shri H.S.Virdee A.W.1 for the reason that certain material i.e., sirki kana etc., used by the owners was going to be of no use to the acquiring authorities, and, therefore, no compensation was payable to them on that account. In me, both these cuts as imposed by the lower court, appear to be wholly unjustified, and, therefore, unsustainable. Merely on account of the fact that the buildings in question were two or four years old by the time these were acquired, there was no justification for the cut on account of depreciation because no such depreciation can safely be assumed in case of newly-constructed buildings. It is mentioned in Shri B.N. Dutta's book “Estimating and Costing” 17th Edition, that “generally there is little depreciation of the building for the first five years.” Besides this, this is what has been opined by their Lordships of the Supreme Court in an unreported judgment in State of Kerala v. Chahala Lonoppan Palu, etc. in a similar situation:-
