MAHANT SWARAN DASS Vs. SHIROMANI GURDWARA PARBANDHAK COMMITTEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WHETHER the bare pleading that succession to the office of a Mahant was from Guru to Chela, is adequate for covering the alleged usage of succession by a Gurbhai, in order to establish the claim of being a hereditary office -holder for sustaining a petition under Section 8 of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 - -is the primary issue which has engendered this difference of opinion amongst the learned Judges composing the Division Bench, which now calls for determination under Clause 26 of the Letters Patent.

(2.) THE case discloses yet again the occasional and unfortunate tardiness of the Legal process. Wayback in, 1961, a petition under Section 7(1) of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925 (hereinafter called the Act), was preferred to the State Government seeking that the institution described as Gurdwara Sahib Siri Guru Granth Sahib in village Payal, Tehsil Sirhind, District Patiala, he declared as a Sikh Gurdwara. Under Section 7 Clause (3) of the Act, the Government published the petition along with requisite documents in the Punjab Government Gazette notification No. 2768. G.P., dated December 9, 1960. It was in response to the said notification that a petition under Section 8 was submitted to the State Government by one Mast Ram an Udasi Sadh claiming that the institution in fact was that of Udasi Sect and not a Sikh Gurdwara. Inevitably this petition was forwarded for decision to the Sikh Gurdwaras Tribunal under Section 14(1) of the Act, where the Respondent Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee, Amritsar, was later impleaded as a Respondent thereto. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee, Amritsar, (hereinafter called the Committee), in contesting the petition controverted all the assertions of the petition and further raised a preliminary objection that the Petitioner had claimed the Gurdwara and the land attached thereto, as his personal property, therefore, he could not maintain the petition under Section 8 of the Act. On merits, it was firmly pleaded that the institution in question was a Sikh Gurdwara. On the pleadings of the parties following issues were framed on November 15, 1962:

(3.) ON the aforesaid amended pleadings, the following issues were struck: