PUNJAB WAKF BOARD Vs. DAULAT RAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The following substantial questions of law arise for consideration in the second appeal:-

(2.) The 1 st defendant-Wakf Board is the appellant before this Court. Three suits were reported to have been filed by respective plaintiffs and the trial Judge consolidated them and referred to the suits as Suit No.452 of 1973. This seems rather a strange manner of consolidation. To our purpose, we need to only state that the dispute concerns the property in khasra No.198.

(3.) The plaintiffs claimed the property as belonging to them and seek for an injunction by referring to the Civil Court decree obtained against the Panchayat that the property belonged to the proprietors on the basis of which mutation was also sanctioned as mutation No.2404 in the year 1967. The cause of action for the suit was that the Wakf Board was attempting to make a lease in respect of the property and the plaintiffs' possession was at the instance of Ajit Singh and one Kewal Krishan, who claimed as lessees under the Wakf Board. The suit was dismissed and in the appeal filed by the plaintiffs, there was a reversal of the judgment holding that the Wakf Board had not established its right of ownership in respect of the property. The trial Court while dismissing the suit had observed that the decree obtained by the plaintiffs was not shown to be correlated to the mutations that were sanctioned but in the Appellate Court, the local commissioner's report was noticed, who had inspected the property and carried out demarcation that spelt out that the new numbers that had come into existence during consolidation and mentioned in mutation as Ex.P8 and that they were really the properties in respect of which the plaintiffs had obtained a Civil Court decree. The mutation itself had been only in respect of those numbers which had come within the municipal limits and new numbers allotted during consolidations were all mentioned in the mutation. Accepting the plea of the plaintiffs that there had been a proper correlation of the properties in the Civil Court decree to the property claimed by them under the mutation, the suit was decreed.