RISHI PARKASH Vs. DIRECTOR CONSOLIDATION OF HOLDINGS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) (20th February, 2004) - These appeals are directed against order dated 18.1.1994 passed by learned Single Judge in Civil Writ Petition Nos. 11812 and 13881 of 1993.

(2.) For the sake of convenience, the facts are being taken from Letters Patent Appeal No. 124 of 1994 (Rishi Parkash and Ors. v. Director Consolidation of Holdings and Ors.). The parties to the litigations belong to village Medawas, Tehsil and District Gurgaon. The scheme of consolidation of holdings in the villages was prepared in the year 1952-53 wherein no passage was given to any proprietor for his individual holding. This was done on the consensus of the proprietors of the village, who had agreed not to have separate passage to their respective fields, but had opted to use the boundaries of their respective fields for their ingress and outgress. This decision was signed by some of the respectables of the village including Balwant Singh father of Rishi Parkash, and Nandan, who was related to appellants Nos. 3 to 5 in the present appeal. The passage aforesaid was used by the proprietors of the village.

(3.) After almost 40 years of finalisation of consolidation proceedings, the appellants filed application dated 3.2.1993 under Section 42 of the East Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1948 (for short, 'the Act') before Director of Holdings, Haryana (respondent No. 1) with the prayer that they may be provided passage to their holdings. The same was accepted by respondent No. 1 vide order dated 26.8.1993 and the matter was sent to Settlement Officer (Consolidation), Rohtak, with the direction that passage be given to the owner of every field so that they can easily perform agricultural operations on their holdings.