Case: Tribhuban Parkash Nayyar Vs. The Union Of India

1. The appellant, a displaced person from Lahore, now in West Pakistan, submitted his claim in respect of the immovable property left by him there. The claim was submitted under the provisions of the Displaced Persons (Claims) Act XLIV of 1950 (hereinafter called the principal Act.) The property in respect of which the claim was submitted was valued by the appellant at Rs. 10 lack. It consisted of a building 21/2 storeyed high with 12 shops and a well as also some platform etc. in Landa Bazar, in Lahore. The Claims Officer verified this claim for Rs. 8 lacs. Against this order a revision was taken by the appellant to the Claims Commissioner who on May 1, 1953 in a brief order raised the value of the verified claim to Rs. 10 lacs. The relevant part of that order reads ashave gone through the order of the learned Claims Officer and I find that he has given a queer argument to allow Rs. 8,00,000/- to the claimant. By every method tried by him the assessment went beyond Rs. 10,00,000/- and I think he ought to have allowed Rs. 10,00,000/- as claimed by the claimant. I enhance the assessment and allow Rs. 10,00,000/- to thewould assume that the Claims Commissioner has been duly delegated the power of the Chief Claims Commissioner to revise the order of the Claims Officer, because no dispute was raised on this point. On the strength of the verified claim the appellant purchased two properties in Delhi at a public auction; one of them is situated in Daryaganj and the other in New Rajinder Nagar. On November 8, 1957, Shri M. S. Chaddha, Settlement Commissioner, exercising power of the Chief Settlement Commissioner issued to the appellant a notice under the Displaced Persons (Claims) Supplementary Act, 1954 calling upon him to show cause why the order of the Claims Commissioner dated May 1, 1953, be not revised and varied. On May 23, 1958, the said officer reduced the appellants claim of Rs. 10 lacs to Rs. 15,000/-. The appellant then filed a writ petition under Article 226 in the Punjab High Court challenging the order reducing the value of his claim. A learned Single Judge on November 1, 1962 allowed the writ petition holding that the learned Settlement Commissioner exercising the power of the Chief Settlement Commissioner had proceeded to deal with the value of the property on wholly conjectural grounds. In a detailed order the learned Single Judge came to the conclusion that the Settlement Commissioner had not only ignored important evidence but had also held certain documents to be forged without any evidence in support of the findings. In the opinion of the learned Single Judge, therefore, there were clear errors of law on the fact of the record rendering the order of the Settlement Commissioner open to challenge in writ proceedings in the High Court. On this view the order was set aside and quashed. It was, however, observed that it would be open to the department to reconsider the entire matter as to valuation and come to a proper conclusion on evidence.2. The respondent took the matter on appeal to a Division Bench under the Letters Patent and the Letters Patent Bench reversed the order of the learned Single Judge holding that on a reading of the order of the Settlement Commissioner it could not be said that his finding was based on no legal evidence. The appeal was accordingly allowed and setting aside the order of the learned Single Judge, the appellants writ petition was dismissed. The appellant has come to this Court on appeal with certificate.

Reasoning: Section 5 (1) (a) of the Supplementarycontention is difficult to accept.It is true that "claim" as defined in the Principal Act broadly speaking means the assertion of a right to ownership of, to any interest in, immovable property. But the Claims Officer under that Act has also to value the claim and the final order embraces both verification of title and valuation. The definition of "verified claim" in Section 2 (f) of the Supplementary Act speaks of the final order and it includes47, Rule 1 (c), Civil P.C.The first three categories contained in Rule 18, in our opinion, do not form a genus or a class with the result that Clause (iv) would not attract the ejusdem generis rule for its construction. But assuming that they constitute a class or kind of objects or genus, it appears to us that grounds given by the Settlement Commissioner are analogous to Clause (iii) which speaks of gross and material irregularity or disparity in the valuation of the claim. This submission must, therefore, be rejected.15. We now come to the merits of the order of the Settlement Commissioner. After going through the order and the material on the record, to which our attention has been drawn, we are satisfied that the Settlement Commissioner has at more places than one based his conclusions on pure conjectures and surmises without there being any legal evidence on the record to support them. We do not consider it necessary to exhaustively deal with the argument in support of the errors of law on the face of the record for the purpose of considering the alleged infirmities in the order of the Settlement Commissioner. The learned Single Judge has dealt with this question at length and we are in agreement with his conclusions. We may only add that we have also looked at the original documents which appeared suspicious to the Settlement Commissioner, but we are unable to find any circumstance which could be said to be suspicious or abnormal so as to give rise to any reasonable doubt about their genuineness. The respondents learned counsel also expressed his inability to bring to our notice any material throwing suspicion on the genuineness of these documents. Indeed the learned counsel was frank enough to express his inability to support the view taken by the Letters Patent Bench or to find fault with the conclusions of the learned Single Judge, whose order seems to be unexceptionable.