Case: Surja Vs. Hardeva And Ors

Hardeva, respondent before us, is a big landlord of village Punniwala Mota in Sirsa Tahsil of Hissar District. Surja, the appellant, was an old tenant of Hardeva and had been cultivating the land in dispute since about 1949. Section 18 of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act 1953, (Punj. Act X of 1953)-hereinafter referred to as the Act-entitles a tenant of a land-owner other than a small land-owner to puchase from the land-owner the land held by him, but not included in the reserved area of the land-owner if he satisfies the conditions laid down in that SectionSurja accordingly applied on August 5, 1957, to the Collector, Hissar District, stating that he intended to purchase the land in dispute and that the land is outside the reserved area of the land owner. He further alleged that he had been in possession of the land for the last eight years. Hardeva in his written statement, inter alia, stated that Surja was in possession of the land only for three or four years. He alleged that Surja had already 150 bighas of cultivable land. He further stated that the land is reserved and for that reason Surja was not entitled to purchase it. In his evidence before the Assistant Collector given on March 25, 1958, Hardeva deposed:"The land is reserved. I do not know whether the land in dispute is reserved or not."By his order dated March 31, 1959, the Assistant Collector, Sirsa, held that Surja was entitled to purchase the land in dispute and, accordingly, fixed the price. Regarding reservation he observed:"It is admitted by the respondent that they are big land-owners and got this land reserved, but later on during his very cross examination, he denied any knowledge about the reservation. The respondent produced no evidence with regard to having this land got reserved though they are big land owners."Hardeva thereupon filed an appeal before the Collector, and one of the grounds teken was that the Assistant Collector erred in holding that the land in dispute was not reserved land. The Collector, by his order dated July 20, 1960, dismissed the appeal. It was common ground before him that Hardeva was a big land-owner and that Surja had been in continuous possession of the land in dispute for a more than six years, and the only point he determined was whether with the addition of the 28 bighas and 12 biswas of land which Surja had been permitted to purchase his total area would exceed the permissible area or not. On this point he held in favour of Surja and accordingly dismissed the appeal.        3. Hardeva then filed a revision before the Commissioner. In the grounds of revision dated October 27, 1960, various grounds were taken but there was no ground regarding reservation of land or selection of land under Section 5-B of the Act. On February 1, 1961, Hardeva filed an application in the Court of the Commissioner. In this application he stated that the entire land in dispute was included in the permissible area selected by him under Section 5-B of the Act by submitting form "E". He further stated that the Financial Commissioner had in Karam Singh v. Angrez Singh, (1960) 39 Lah LT 57 held that selection under Section 5-B (1) had the same force as reservation under Section 5 of the Act, and this disentitled Surja from purchasing the land in dispute. He prayed that he may be allowed to raise the plea of selection under Section 5-B (1). He stated that this plea involved a question of jurisdiction and in the interst of justice he may be permitted to raise this plea as an additional ground of revision.        4. The Commissioner allowed the ground to be taken but as Surjas counsel suspected the bona fides of the selection, the Commissioner sent for the origional file and he satisfied himself, after examining the original form "g" and the affidavit in relation to form "g", that Hardeva had duly submitted the selection document to the Collector within time on June 19, 1958. It appears that the Financial Commissioner had held in Dhanapat Rai v. State of Punjab, 1961 Lah LT 8 that the period of six months allowed by Section 5-B for making selection would start from March 22, 1958, the date when the Punjab Government Notification prescribing the form was issued. The Commissioner felt that the selected land could not be purchased under Section 18 by the tenant. He accordingly submitted the case to the Financial Commissioner with the recommendation that the revision petition be accepted and that the orders of the Assistant Collector and the Collector be set aside.        5. The Financial Commissioner dismissed the revision. He held that as Hardeva had not put forward the plea of selection before the Assisstant Collector or the Collector he could not be allowed to do so at that stage. He observed:"In other words the consideration that reservation ofarea under Section 5 and selection of area under Section 5-B are indentical in their effect has no relevance in the present cases for the reasons that it was never claimed (except in revision) that the area had been selected under section 5-B. If such a claim had been made and substantiated, the position would have been different, but since this was not done, the decision against the petitioner cannot be challenged. It is also clear that there is no question in these cases of the authorities concerned having acted without jurisdiction or having exercised it with illegality or material irregularity which alone could justify interference in revision."6. Hardeva then filed a petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution. The High Court held that the Financial Commissioner should have accepted the recommendation made by the Commissioner and accordingly allowed the petition and declared that Surja was not entitled to purchase the land in dispute selected by the land-owner under the provisions of Section 5-B of the Act. The learned Single Judge was of the view that the disputed question relates to jurisdiction and went to the root of the whole matter.

Court's reasoning:
9. It seems to us that the Financial Commissioner did not appreciate the content of his powers of revision under Section 24, read with Section 84 of the Tenancy Act. It was obvious from the report of the Commissioner that if the finding arrived at by the Commissioner was accepted the Assistant Collector and the Collector had no jurisdiction in the matter10. In our opinion the Financial Commissioner should have gone into the question whether the Commissioners report was acceptable or not on merits11. It is urged by the learned counsel for the Surja that the High Court did not decide the question whether the selection had been properly made within time, but it merely accepted the report of the Commissioner. He, therefore, still disputes the fact that the selection was made within time. He also says that it is not a genuine and valid selection. These points should be gone into by the Financial Commissioner.