IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No. 6448 of 2010 Date of decision : 29.08.2011 Jeet Singh .....Petitioner VERSUS State of Punjab and others ....Respondents CORAM:- HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH PRESENT: Mr. Rajbir Singh, Advocate for the petitioner. Mr. A.S. Jattana, Addl. AG, Punjab for the State. Mr. Manish Kumar, Advocate for respondent No. 3. **** RANJIT SINGH, J. Respondent-Gram Panchayat filed petition under Section 7 of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 for eviction of the petitioner. The petitioner, however, relied upon the resolution passed by the respondent-Gram Panchayat whereby the decision was taken to receive the market value of the land, which was stated to be in illegal possession of the petitioner and other illegal occupants. The District Development and Panchayat Officer exercising the power of Collector passed an order accepting the prayer of the petitioner that his prayer for depositing the market value of the land, as agreed to by the Panchayat, be accepted. The Panchayat subsequently, however, filed an appeal against this order. Respondent No. 3 has set aside the order passed by the DDPO exercising the powers of the Collector on the ground that there was Civil Writ Petition No. 6448 of 2010 -2- no jurisdiction with him to pass such an order. The petitioner has, accordingly, challenged this order through the present writ petition. The first submission made by counsel for the petitioner is that the Panchayat had itself agreed to the proposal for the petitioner to deposit the market value of the land and this was on the basis of resolution passed by the Panchayat. The Gram Panchayat may have passed the resolution that the land can be sold to the petitioner at the market value but for selling the land the Panchayat was not competent unless the prior permission was obtained from the Government. Counsel for the respondent is justified in submitting that DDPO had no jurisdiction to pass an order directing the Panchayat to accept the market value of the land in the background that the Panchayat has passed the resolution when the legal position is that the Panchayat was not competent to sell this land unless prior permission had been obtained from the Government. In my view, the Commissioner had rightly intervened in this order. The order passed by the Collector obviously is beyond his jurisdiction. The Collector could have either accepted or rejected the application filed by the Panchayat for directing eviction of the petitioner or otherwise. The Collector would have no jurisdiction to issue such direction, especially so, when the Panchayat was not competent to sell this land unless permission had been obtained from the Government. In this view of the matter, no case for interference in the impugned order is made out. The request of the counsel for the petitioner for remanding the case to the Collector to decide the same Civil Writ Petition No. 6448 of 2010 -3- on merit would also be without substance because his order is without jurisdiction, which has been interfered with by the Commissioner. There is no justification for remanding the case back to the Collector for deciding the same on merit as the petitioner, apparently, does not have any right to purchase this land. Dismissed. August 29, 2011 ( RANJIT SINGH ) rts JUDGE