BEANT SINGH Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner Beant Singh is before this court on a challenge to the orders passed by the authorities under the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act of 1954. The litigation is a fallout of the partition qualms of a person who had been allotted the properties provisionally for properties that were forsaken at the places now in Pakistan. Like him, four of his brothers Gurmukh Singh, Rajinder Singh, Balwant Singh and Basant Singh, who had also been allotted properties based on their mutalba claims. The brothers made out a case of oral partition and specific enjoyment of properties in Pakistan and the allotments of corresponding value initially were provisional, in the sense that the claims had to be verified with reference to the jamabandi entries that were entered in the places in Pakistan. After the documentary verification was done, there had been a reappraisal of the extent of holdings and the contest was essentially between two brothers Beant Singh and Basant Singh. The orders sought to resolve the dispute in favour of Basant Singh's claim when he pleaded that some of the properties that had been purportedly allotted to him were actually properties held by him benami for his brother, Beant Singh. The reckoning of such properties were to be held made only as properties in the possession of Beant Singh and the reappraisal to be done on that basis. This was accepted and Beant Singh is aggrieved by these orders.

(2.) SOME more factual details would require to be set forth to identify the areas of dispute and the scope of enquiry.

(3.) WHEN the jamabandis arrived, it was seen that Chak No.43 had not been merely recorded in the name of only Beant Singh but in the names of all persons. This was taken to be a ground for re -allotment and initially the authorities had taken the view that the entitlements of properties will have to be handled only in the manner in which the jamabandi entries revealed. The department pointed out that a case of oral partition had been deliberately introduced by the brothers to cause loss to the compensation pool by making possible the allotment of about 30 acres more than what would have been possible if all the brothers were to be taken as equally entitled to properties both in Chak No.51 and Chak No.43. The reappraisal which was sought to be done had been the subject of challenge before this court in CWP No.1412 of 1962 and CWP No.1284 of 1964. The High Court directed that the brothers' statements to obtain primacy about how they had partitioned the property already and how the statements had been made.