RAM AWADH SINGH Vs. ADDL COMMISSIONER AZAMGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Heard learned counsel for the parties.

(2.) The sole question which has been addressed on this petition is whether the respondents 1 and 2 acting as revenue courts under the provisions of the U.P. Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, (1950 Act) had the jurisdiction to recall a compromise decree recorded inter partes. The skeletal facts which merit notice are as follows.

(3.) The dispute relates to Khata No. 102 falling in Village Titlaukiya/Kishoreganj and Khata Nos. 65 and 78 falling in Village Mahendua, Tehsil Belthara Road in the District of Ballia. The petitioners filed suits referable to Section 229-B of the 1950 Act claiming rights under Section 164 of that statute on the allegation that Maha Prasad, the defendant in that suit, had executed an agreement in their favour and on that basis they were inducted in possession. It is stated that during the pendency of that suit a compromise was entered into between the plaintiff petitioners and Maha Prasad and pursuant thereto, compromise terms were settled in writing and filed in the suit proceedings on 23 December 1987. The petitioners assert that the revenue court after verifying the compromise decreed the suits in terms thereof by a common judgment dated 3 May 1989. Six years after the aforesaid compromise decrees were passed, Maha Prasad filed restoration applications. In those applications it was asserted that the compromise terms as framed and filed in Court were an act of fraud and that the plaintiff petitioners had taken advantage of the fact that he was an illiterate person. While these restoration applications were pending, Maha Prasad is stated to have died. According to the petitioners, no applications for substitution were filed and in view thereof, the restoration applications should have been dismissed as having abated. However, this issue need not be gone into in light of the principal legal question that has been raised and addressed. By a common judgment dated 6 December 1997, the Court of the Deputy Collector, the second respondent herein, allowed these applications and restored both the suits to their original numbers. Aggrieved by that decision the petitioners filed two revisions before the Commissioner Azamgarh Division which were ultimately transferred and placed for disposal before the first respondent here. These revisions have been dismissed by the order dated 31 March 2001 impugned herein. When the instant writ petition was entertained, a learned Judge of the Court granted stay of the impugned orders and further provided for stay of all proceedings taken pursuant to the judgments impugned herein.