MAHANT HAR KISHAN DAS Vs. SATGUR PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are two applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. They arise from a decision of a Bench of this Court in two appeals disposed of by one judgment, These two appeals were brought against a decision of the Civil Judge of Lucknow in one suit. The suit related to properties alleged to belong to a Sangat by the name of Bagh Baba Hazara. These properties mainly consisted of Eagh Baba Hazara, Bagh Suraj Kund, certain muafl villages, certain non-muafi villages and certain movable properties of the total valuation of over Rs. 5500000/ -.

(2.) THE plaintiff's case was that the Sangat was founded by Baba Hazara, a Faqir of the Nihang udasi Sect, that the Sangat was a public religious endowment managed by Mahants, that the first mahant was Baba Hazara, who was succeeded by his disciple, Amriti Das, who again was succeeded by Mahant Gur Narain pas, that a bulk of the property was acquired in the name of gur Narain Das, that the property thus acquired was either given to Gur Narain Das for the purpose of the Sangat or was acquired by him out of the profits of the previously endowed property in his possession or was dedicated by him for the purposes of the Sangat, and that Gur narain Das was succeeded by his disciple, Har Charan Das, who was succeeded by Sant Rain das, who, in his turn, was succeeded by Mahant Har Narain Das, who died in 1933. The plaintiff claimed that he was a disciple of Mahant Har Narain Das and was installed as the Mahant by the community of Nihang Udasi Sect and was entitled to possession over the properties as a Mahant.

(3.) THE defence, inter alia, was that there was no Sangat, that Bagh Baba Hazara was not a public religious endowment, that two properties Bagh Baba Hazara and Bagh Suraj Kund were acquired by Baba Hazara as his personal property and remained so up to his death and were inherited by his disciple Amriti Das, that Gur Narain Das acquired valuable personal properties which were never dedicated by him for a public trust, that the properties were confiscated by the British government after the mutiny and were regranted to him as a Taluqdar in his own right with full power of alienation and that they were secular properties to which the defendant was entitled to both as the sister's son of Sant Rain Das, the last owner, and as his disciple and also on account of a family settlement arrived at between Mahant Har Narain Das and himself by which Mahant har Narain Das reserved to himself a life interest only in the properties and acknowledged the defendant's title to reversion after Har Narain Das's death.