YESHWANT VITHAL Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two writ petitions are at the instance of the tenants who held different lands of which the common respondent, a former Army Officer was the land owner. It is common ground that the land owner (R-4) who was in the Army till April 1972 had thereafter retired from the army. During the interregnum and even thereafter the lands in question had stood leased to the petitioners herein who with the advent of the Land Reforms Act, are stated to have made applications to the appropriate land Tribunals for grant of occupancy rights in regard to which a series of confrontation is on between both sides.

(2.) Herein we are concerned with a spate of applications made by Col. Deshpande, both when he was in service and after he retired from service seeking resumption of lands in question from his tenants under S.15 of the Land Reforms Act, 1962. The first of these applications is stated to have been made in the year 1956 and the last of them in the year 1966. Deshpande, who is also credited with (sic) denies having made a sue an application in the year 1976 and submits that in 1976 he had merely reminded the authorities of the applications made by him on earlier occasions seeking resumption of lands and that his applications were still pending disposal.

(3.) Be that as it was the applications of Col. Deshpande, were ultimately disposed of by the Tahsildar, Land Reforms, Chikodi under an order dt. 30-10-1977 by allowing the same and directing resumption of the lands held by the petitioners herein. Aggrieved by that order, the petitioners preferred unsuccessfully an appeal to the Assistant Commissioner, Chikodi, in Appeal No. K.L.R. A.P.11 of 1977. The learned Assistant Commissioner, dismissed that appeal by an order made on 28-8-1982 and thereby affirmed the Tahsildar's order referred to earlier. The two orders are produced at Anners.-B and C. In these writ petitions the prayer is to quash both the said orders on the short ground that the applications of Deshpande now granted by the Tahsildar, were legally untenable having been made to an authority, who was not competent to deal with them and having been made at a stage or point of time when the land owner could not have made those applications at all.