RAMDAYAL GIRDHARI PUROHIT Vs. STATE OF M.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a Letters Patent Appeal from an order of Bhutt J. (as he then was) summarily rejecting a petition filed by the appellant under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. By that application the appellant sought the issue of an appropriate writ or direction for restraining the respondents from taking possession of a plot of land adjoining his house situated in Pratap Sagar Ward, Beniganj, Chhatarpur. The appellant claimed that he was in possession of the land as an owner for several years; that in 1945 when the Municipal Board of Chhatarpur, which was a Government Department of the former Chhatarpur State, made an attempt to realise rent from him, the Ruler of Chhatarpur State made an order restraining the Board from recovering any rent from him, and that, therefore, the notice given by the opponents asking him to vacate the piece of land and restore its possession to them and further threatening him with forcible dispossession was without any legal authority.

(2.) THE learned single Judge rejected the petition observing that the dispute between the appellant and the respondents was "one of civil and of a contentious nature, for the determination of which the proper forum is the civil Court". Shri Singh, learned counsel for the appellant, urged everything that could possibly be said in support of this appeal, but none the lees we are not persuaded to a different result. The petition filed by the appellant under Article 226 of the Constitution and the various annexures to it, though they show that the appellant has been in possession of the land for some years, do not at all reveal as to how the appellant derived his title to the land. In his application which the petitioner presented to the respondents objecting to the notice given to him it was mentioned by him that he was allowed by the Ruler of Chhatarpur State to park his buses and lorries on the land according to custom. This statement of the appellant himself prima facie indicates that his user of the land was not as an owner bat merely as a licensee. The appellant's petition thus did not at all show that he had a clear and undisputable right to the possession of the land, and the title he asserted to it was disputed by the opponents.

(3.) IN Tejraj's case AIR 1958 M.P. 115 at p. 122 reliance was placed on the decision of the Supreme Court in Sohan Lal v. Union of India AIR 1957 SC 529. That was a case in which the Punjab High Court had made an order under Article 226 of the Constitution directing the Union of India and one Sohanlal to forthwith restore possession of a house situated in Delhi to one Jagannath who was a displaced person and a refugee from Pakistan. Against this order of the High Court Sohanlal appealed to the Supreme Court. It was observed by the Supreme Court that before the property in dispute could be restored to Jagannath, it would be necessary to declare that he had title in that property and was entitled to recover possession of it. Their Lordships of the Supreme Court expressed themselves thus: