SUNDAR SINGH Vs. NARAIN SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by special leave from the decree of the Punjab High Court in a suit brought by the plaintiffs-respondents for pre-emption. The appellants are vendees to the sale which was pre-empted. The facts found by the courts below are these. The property in suit consisted of agricultural land as well as some baras in village Jalalpur. Punnu Singh and Mansha Singh who were also parties to the suit as defendants sold the property in suit on January 15, 1955 to the appellants. Thereafter consolidation proceedings took place in this village and came to an end before the present suit was filed on January 14, 1956. Of the vendees, six had no share in the village from before while four already had some share in the village. As a result of the consolidation proceedings, six of the vendees who had no share in the village from before were allotted other land in place of the land which they had purchased under the sale-deed. The other four vendees who had some share in the village from before were allotted land in two blocks in lieu of the land they had in the village from before as well as the land which they had purchased by the sale-deed in question. The plaintiffs-respondents instituted the suit on the basis of their being collaterals and co-sharers and wanted that they should be given out of the land allotted to the vendees in consolidation proceedings such land as they would be entitled to after pre-emption of the sale in question.

(2.) The suit was resisted by the appellants on a number of grounds. The main ground of defence with which we are concerned in the present appeal was whether the suit was maintainable with respect to the land which had been obtained by the vendees during consolidation proceedings in lieu of the land which was the subject-matter of the sale-deed. The trial court held in favour of the plaintiffs-respondents and granted a decree for pre-emption. On appeal to the High Court by the vendees, the High Court held on the basis of S. 24 of the Patiala and East Punjab States Union Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, No. V of 2007 Bk. (hereinafter referred to as the Act), that it was open to the pre-emptor to follow the land which had been given to the vendees in consolidation proceedings in lieu of the land which was the subject-matter of the sale-deed. Further in the High Court another point was raised on behalf of four of the appellants who had land from before in the village and it was urged that in their case it was not possible to distinguish which land had been allotted to them in place of the land sold and therefore no pre-emption decree should be granted. This argument was also rejected by the High Court, and the appeal was dismissed. The High Court having refused the certificate, the appellants applied and obtained special leave from this Court; and that is how the matter has come before us.

(3.) The main question that has been argued before us is that the suit is not maintainable as it is not open to the pre-emptor to follow the land which might have been obtained by the vendees in lieu of the land actually sold to them. The answer to this question depends upon the interpretation of S. 24 of the Act in the background of the law of pre-emption. In Audh Behari Singh v. Gajadhar Jaipuria, 1955-1 SCR 70: (AIR 1954 SC 417), this Court held that-