B S PARASHIVAIAH DEAD Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN view of deletion of 7th respondent, learned Counsel for the petitioner is permitted to reassign the ranking of the respondents.

(2.) THE grievance of the petitioner is that the 3rd respondent is one of the members of the Land tribunal and he being an Advocate was appearing for respondents 4 to 10 and his participation in the proceedings of the Land Tribunal cause prejudice to the petitioners. Mr. Chandrashekar, learned Counsel for 3rd respondent pointed out that in the statement of objections filed, the 3rd respondent has stated that he will not participate in the proceedings in respect of respondents 4 and 5. In view of this, the allegations made against the 3rd respondent are withdrawn by the petitioners by filing a memo. The memo is accepted. Counsel for the petitioners is seeking the same in respect of respondents 6 to 9 also. The same will be dealt with in due course of this order.

(3.) THE petitioners have sought for quashing the impugned order at Annexure-C, dated 7-1-2003 by which the application filed by the respondents 5 to 9 for clubbing their cases along with the case of 4th respondent, is rejected by the Land Tribunal. The reason assigned for rejecting the application is contrary to Rule 17 (6) of the Karnataka Land Reforms Rules, 1974, The said rule reads as under. " if there are more applications than one for registration of occupancy rights by different persons in respect of the same land, those cases shall be clubbed together and a common order passed". In the instant case, respondents 4 to 9 are claiming occupancy rights for various extents in respect of same land. The details are mentioned in paragraph 4 of the writ petition. Hence, as per the rule extracted above, all their cases have to be clubbed together and a common order has to be passed. The impugned order Annexure-C rejecting the application seeking clubbing of the cases is therefore liable to be quashed. Consequently, the said application is allowed.