GRAM PANCHAYAT Vs. ADDITIONAL DIRECTOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This judgment of mine will dispose of civil Writ Petition Nos. 3411, 3410, 4856 and 1985, as common questions of law and facts are involved and that is why these cases are being disposed of together.

(2.) For narration of facts, Civil Writ Petition No. 3411 of 1985 is being adverted to. Some time before 1958-59, consolidation proceedings under the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1948 (hereinafter called the Act) were initiated and some land was reserved for common purposes. The land which was reserved for common purposes was entered by the Consolidation Authorities in the name of the Gram Panchayat. Respondents Sohan Singh and others preferred a petition under Section 42 of the Act, challenging the porceedings held under Section 21(1) of the Act, paying that area of Khewat Nos. 61/71 to 78 had been wrongly entered in the name of the Gram Panchayat in the Jamabandi for the year 1958-59; whereas the respondents herein were in occupation of the land as share-holders for a very long time. According to them, the Jamabandi of Samvat 2010-11 carried an entry to the effect that the respondents were in possession of the land in dispute. The prayer was that they were entitled to hold on to the land as owners and the land did not vest in the Gram Panchayat. The Additional Director, Consolidation of Holdings, vide his order dated 4th March, 1985 (copy Annexure P-3) allowed the petition of the present respondents and held that the pre-existing entries in favour of the respondents, viz, "Shamlat Deh Hasab Rasad Khewat" should continue instead of the entry being in the name of the "Nagar Sabha". The case was remanded back to the Consolidation Officer for correcting the entry regarding it in the Khewat and for partitioning the land of the respondents. The Gram Panchayat has come up in the present writ petitions challenging the order of the Additional Director, Consolidation of Holdings, referred to above.

(3.) The primary contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the land in question was Banjar Qadim and had been reserved for common purposes, during the consolidation of holdings in the village and was actually being uses for common purposes, inasmuch as the Gram Panchayat was leasing out the land to various persons and the respondents were in possession of the land in dispute as tenants-at-will of the Gram Panchayat and, therefore, the entry regarding the land in dispute that the same belonged to the Nagar Sabha, was correct and the respondents had no right or title in the land inasmuch as the land stood reserved for the common purposes.