MD GOLAM RASID Vs. DULAL MAJHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS revisional application has come before this bench as a learned judge of this Court, while hearing this matter sitting singly, was inclined to hold that the earlier case of this Court in Shima sundari vs. Paltu Hembram (AIR 1982 Calcutta 5), disposed of by a learned single JUDGE was not correctly decided.

(2.) SECTION 53a of the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955 inserted in 1972, now mandates that "the Revenue Officer having jurisdiction in the area in which the land is situated shall be a necessary party to all suits of civil nature relating to any such land or portion thereof in which one of the parties to the suit is a member of the Scheduled Tribe and the other party is not a member of any Scheduled Tribe". The Section is not so couched as to provide that the plaintiff shall make the Revenue Officer a party to the suit or that no suit shall be filed or entertained without such joinder. The obligation to make the Revenue Officer a party in such a case is no less on the Court itself. The section is a special provision within the meaning of Article 15 (4) of the constitution of India and stems out of the anxiety of the State to protect and safeguard the interest of the Scheduled Tribe as enjoined in different provisions of our Constitution. Since; as a result of the provisions of this section 53a, no suit referred to in that Section can proceed without the revenue Officer as a party, he is obviously a necessary party and to that extent, if we may say so with respect, this point in Shima Sundari (supra) was correctly decided,

(3.) BUT we do not see as to how it can be ruled, as ruled in Shima Sundari (supra), that in such a case, the service of a notice under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure on the Revenue Officer is a condition precedent for the maintainability of such a suit, where one has to make the Revenue Officer a necessary party to a suit, not out of any inherent requirements of the matters in dispute, but because of a mandate tin a later Statute.