BANSARI LAL Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The point of law that arises in this appeal under Clause 10 of the Letters Patent and in Civil Writ 2607 of 1969 (Hardit Singh etc. v. Financial Commissioner etc.) is the same and these two cases will be disposed of by this order. The facts in the Letters Patent appeal may briefly be stated as follows :-

(2.) The learned counsel vehemently urged that the person, who can be said to have been given the allotment of land within the meaning of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, is the person who is given the proprietary rights. It is not necessary to go into this question, because Bansari Lal does not Fall within the definition of 'displaced person'. Even if the allotment has been made in his favour, that would not help him. So far as the question of his being considered 'displaced person' is concerned, the argument of the learned counsel was that after the demise of Devi Dayal, it could be said that Bansari Lal abandoned that property finally when he accepted the proprietary rights in the land on 24th June, 1958. Prior to that, till the Central Government had acquired the rights of the evacuees in India, he was still the owner of the property left in Pakistan and at any time he could have gone back if the circumstances were such that he could manage his land there. He urged that even after 1947, for some time, the two dominions permitted the transfer of properties by the evacuees on both sides and there had been a number of exchanges of immovable property, by those who had migrated to India of their property left in Pakistan with the property in India belonging to the evacuees who had left for Pakistan. This may be so. But in this case, by accepting the allotment under the notification, referred to above, Devi Dayal indicated that he had abandoned the land in Pakistan because of the disturbances and at no stage he indicated that he wanted to go back. Nor did Bansari Lal indicate that he wanted to go back. So the abandonment could be done only once and not several times. The decision of the Full Bench, therefore, prima facie, which is binding on us, appears to be correct, that only the persons who had originally migrated from Pakistan and had been allotted land would be treated as displaced persons.

(3.) The case in Munshi Ram v. The Financial Commissioner etc. was even stronger than the case before us, because there the original man, who migrated, died before any allotment could be made. The Department technically made the allotment in his favour as if the allotment was made immediately after partition and then mutated the property in the names of the heir.