Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 Date of decision: 13.07.2011 Harkishan Singh ...Petitioner Versus State of Haryana and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH Present: Mr. P.S. Khurana, Advocate, for the petitioner. Mr. N.D.S. Mann, Addl. AG, Punjab for the State. RANJIT SINGH J. A person who approaches a court of equity or for that matter any court, must approach with clean hands. Any attempt to mislead or an attempt to support claim by tempering documents not only should lead to rejection of case but would need to be checked and curbed. The petitioner in these Civil Writ Petition Nos. 10106 of 2009 (Tarandeep Singh versus State of Punjab and others), 10107 of 2009 (Kimti Lal Tulli versus State of Punjab and others), 10072 of 2009 (Harkishan Singh versus State of Punjab and others) and 10090 of 2009 (Dr. Inderjit Singh Virk versus State of Punjab and others), are found to have falsified the record and have approached by misstating or withholding facts and have rendered themselves ineligible for any relief besides exposing themselves to some action. The question being common, these writ petitions are being disposed of together. Facts are being noticed from Harkishan Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 2 Singh's case (supra) The petitioner has sought quashing of order dated 02.06.2009 passed by the Deputy Commissioner, Jalandhar, who has passed this order while exercising the powers of the Commissioner under the Public Premises Act directing the petitioner to vacate the demised premises. Claiming himself to be in peaceful possession of the land measuring 9 marlas comprising Khewat No. 7542 Khatoni No. 9467, Khasra No. 18243/6319 to 6322, 6336 to 6338. Khasra No. 18248/6308 to 6311, 6316 and Khasra No. 18262/6275 to 6281 for the last 25 years, the petitioner had filed this petition to challenge the order of his eviction. The petitioner claims to have effected construction over the land for more than 25 years and states that he is earning his livelihood by carrying on small time shop and also has residence over the land. The petition under Sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Public Premises and Land (Eviction and Rent Recovery) Act, 1973 was filed by respondents No. 1 and 2 for eviction of the petitioner in the court of SDM-cum-Collector, Jalandhar. The petitioner appeared and raised objections, inter alia, pleading that the department of Agriculture was not the owner of this property and the petitioner was in peaceful possession of the same for 25 years or so. After considering the documentary evidence, the Collector found that the provincial Government was the owner of the disputed land. As per the petitioner, a visit to spot had revealed that the Department of Agriculture had its land having its own boundary. Against this order dated 29.12.2006, the respondents had filed an appeal before the Commissioner who accepted the appeal and had directed the Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 3 petitioner to vacate the land in dispute within one month. The petitioner has impugned this order dated 02.06.2009 through the present writ petition. When the case came up for hearing on 15.07.2009, the counsel for the petitioner had, inter alia, contended that the petitioner had made an application to the Tehsildar (Sales), Jalandhar for allotment of the land in accordance with the Punjab Government letter dated 19.04.1999. A reference was made to some letter through which, the Punjab Government had issued some instructions for regularizing the unauthorized possession over the urban Government land in favour of the persons who are in possession. On the basis of this stand as projected, the Court passed an order of status quo with respect to the disputed premises. The matter has, thereafter, remained pending. Number of adjournments were sought and none had appeared on behalf of the petitioner on some of the dates fixed. Thus, the petitioner has been able to enjoy the benefit of interim order for a period of 2 years. Noticing this, the Court has vacated the interim order on 03.03.2011. Reply in this case is filed. Reply would reveal the reasons for this evasive attempt. It is alleged that the petitioner has tempered with the documents placed on record of writ and has, thus, made a deliberate attempt to mislead this Court by providing a wrong/misleading information. Even today a request was made to seek adjournment. In the reply, the State has disclosed that the petitioner has purposely omitted the entry in column 5 in the translated copy of jamabandi for the year 1999-2000 annexed with the petition as Annexure P-3. The entry in column no. 5 has been Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 4 omitted altogether. The omitted entry shows the department of agriculture to be in possession. The original entry reads as 'Makbooja Mehkma Jarait Farm', which means 'Possession of Department of Agriculture Farm'. This true translated copy of this entry has now been placed on record with the reply. On this basis, the respondents would plead that the petitioner is guilty of committing a perjury for which he is liable for being proceeded against for a criminal charge. Not only this, the petitioner is accused of providing misleading information while pleading for grant of interim order. It was made out before this Court that his application is pending before the Tehsildar Sales, Jalandhar for purchase of land in terms of Punjab Government instructions. It is now stated in the reply that this application was dismissed in the presence of the petitioner long ago. This fact is not disclosed before this Court by the petitioner till date. It is further disclosed that the land in question has a great commercial potential being a prime land. The Deputy Commissioner exercising the powers of Commissioner has specifically recorded that the Punjab Government has framed no policy to allot provincial government land in urban areas. This land being commercial in nature and in view of its location can only be disposed of by way of open auction. The matter gets compounded when the further conduct of the petitioner is noticed. It is revealed that the petitioner Gurcharan Singh son of Sh. Harmohinder Singh had filed a civil suit for permanent injunction for the same land. The civil court had issued status quo order on 05.03.1994, which was impugned by the Chief Agriculture Officer, Jalandhar before the Addl. District Judge, Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 5 Jalandhar. The petitioner had specifically pleaded the ground of discrimination that he was being signed out in respect of lawful encroachment over the government land. Later, the Additional District Judge, Jalandhar on 08.11.1995 had vacated the status quo order and had directed the petitioner to vacate the site in dispute within 30 days of the pronouncing of the order. This order was challenged by the petitioner before this Court. The revision filed by the petitioner was dismissed. Still the petitioner misled the Court and was able to get the interim order in question. In view of the facts as noticed, no case is made out for interference in the impugned order. It is noticed that the petitioner has deliberately acted to mislead and misrepresent. He has approached the Court by tempering with the record. Rather the petitioner has deliberately placed the tempered true copies on record. This is a conscious attempt on his part. The petitioner has thus, mislead the Court in passing interim order in his favour. The petitioner is clearly seen to have polluted justice. Such conduct by a litigant would not only needs to be deprecated but is required to be curbed with heavy hands. Observation made by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu Vs. Jagannath (1994) 1 SCC 1 may be noticed here:- “property-grabbers, tax-evaders, bank loan-dodgers and other unscrupulous persons from all walks of life find the court process a convenient lever to retain the illegal gains indefinitely. We have no hesitation to say that a person, whose case is based on falsehood, has no right to approach the court. He can be summarily thrown out at Civil Writ Petition No. 10072 of 2009 6 any stage of the litigation.” Taking notice of this misconduct of the petitioner, the writ petitions are directed to be dismissed with exemplary costs, which is assessed as ` 25,000/- in each case. The costs be deposited in the accounts of High Court Bar Association Welfare Fund. July 13, 2011 (RANJIT SINGH) rts JUDGE