BELI SINGH SON OF KISHAN SINGH SON OF DEVA SINGH Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The writ petition challenges the order passed by the Financial Commissioner being the final revisional authority in the scheme of allotment under the Haryana Utilization of Surplus and other Area Scheme of 1976. The petitioner was claiming himself to be a sitting tenant of the property of the landlord, Dayal Dass and he had a grievance about the allotment of the property to one Ram Chand and Arjan Dass in alleged recognition of a tenant under Category-C. They had been admittedly tenants of some other property from which they had been ejected under the provisions of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act of 1953 (for short, '1953 Act'). The petitioner claimed that he was a category-BB tenant, having been in possession of property from the year 1953. Even before allotment, Ram Chand had died and therefore the case was considered only in the light of claim by Arjan Dass. The Financial Commissioner held that the petitioner was only a tenant in categoryCC and since the allottee belonged to higher category-C, the allotment made already to him was required to be confirmed. It is this order which is in challenge before this Court in the writ petition.

(2.) The learned counsel for the petitioner would contend that apart from the fact that he had been a tenant of this property, the petitioner had been a tenant of 59 bighas-3 biswas of land belonging to one Parma Nand, Ram Chand, Kaniya Lal and Narain Dass and by an application filed under Section 9-A of the 1953 Act, he was ordered to be evicted. The order copy has also been filed along with the writ petition to prove his status as a category C tenant, if not to be treated as category BB tenant. His contention, therefore, was that an allotment could not have been made without considering the petitioner's own status as a category-C tenant which was at par with the allottee. Although the petitioner claimed that he was a category BB tenant, the learned counsel for the State points out that even in the application form filed under US2 (Annexure-R1), the petitioner had only contended that he had been cultivating the land of Dayal Dass only from the year 1968. Category-BB tenant must be a person who held the property on lease from 15.04.1953 and continued in possession of land which is not included in the permissible area of the landowner. Evidently, the petitioner came by possession only after the year 1953 and cannot qualify for being treated as a tenant under category-BB.

(3.) The impugned order cannot be sustained only because the Financial Commissioner has taken the petitioner as falling within category-CC when the order passed by the Assistant Collector on 18.05.1961 clearly showed that in respect of some other property he had been ejected and qualified as a tenant ejected by a small landowner and was to be placed in category-C. There could not have been a valid justification to completely discard the claim of a sitting tenant on the property for seeking for recognition of his right as a category-C tenant entitled to an allotment admissible for an extent corresponding to the land held by him under Parma Nand, Ram Chand, Narain Dass referred to in the order dated 18.05.1961.