LAJYA RAM KAPUR Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal arises out of the order of the Subordinate Judge, Karnal returning the plaint of the plaintiff-appellant for presentation to the competent authority, it having been found that the civil Court Has no jurisdiction to try the suit.

(2.) THE plaintiff Lajya Ram Kapur brought this suit on 19th of December, 1951, for the issue of a mandatory injunction to the Union of India and the Punjab State, respondents 1 and 2, respectively, directing them to sell the land measuring 3751 bighas and 7 biswas in village Sithana of Tensfi Panipat in accordance with the policy decision embodied in a memorandum issued by the Department of rehabilitation of the Punjab State on 10th of March, 1951.

(3.) THE facts on which there is no serious dispute are that the plaintiff came to acquire lease-hold rights in the land which originally belonged to Muslim evacuees. This land was, in the first instance, leased to the predecessors-in-interest of the plaintiff for a period of 15 years in November, 1946. This lease would have normally expired under the "deeming" clause embodied in Section 9 of the East punjab Displaced Persons (Land Resettlement) Act, 1949, on 25th of July, 1949, whereby all leases made by an evacuee in favour of a person other than an evacuee were to terminate on 25th of July, 1949. An exception was, now-ever, made in this section that a lease could have been exempted from the operation of the section by an order of the Custodian. It is not disputed that the plaintiff obtained an order of the Custodian on 25th of March, 1953, and thereby the lease was to expire with the Kharif harvest of 1961, as originally stipulated.