SUBHA RAM Vs. GRAM SABHA, MOHAMADPUR MAJRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff-appellant has filed this regular second appeal against the judgment and decree dated 13.10.1978 passed by the Additional District Judge, Sonepat. The facts of the case, in brief, are that the plaintiff brought this suit for possession pleading inter alia that the suit land situated in the revenue estate of village Mohamadpur Majra vested in the defendant-respondent Gram Panchayat by virtue of Punjab Act No. 1 of 1954 but he has been in cultivating possession thereof from Rabi 1956 up to Kharif 1975 considering himself to be owner thereof and that his adverse possession had ripened into title but, in proceedings under section 7 of the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as the Act), initiated by the defendants, the Assistant Collector Ist Grade, Sonepat, passed order Exhibit P-2 on 13.6.1974 ordering his ejectment. In appeal, the said order was confirmed by the Collector on 27.8.1974, vide Exhibit P-3. In pursuance of these orders, the plaintiff was dispossessed from the suit land on 23.12.1974. The plaintiff-appellant alleged that the aforesaid orders of the Assistant Collector and the Collector were ultra vires, illegal and without jurisdiction and that he has been illegally dispossess from the suit land upon which he had acquired title on account of his adverse possession. Since the defendants refused to restore possession to the plaintiff, hence this suit. Resisting the suit on all counts, the defendants questioned the jurisdiction of the civil Court and denied that the plaintiff had become owner of the suit land by way of adverse possession. For the obvious reasons, they asserted the validity of the proceedings under section 7 of the Act. On the pleadings of the parties, the following issues were framed:-