NARINDER PAL Vs. NATHA SINGH AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order shall dispose of Civil Revision No. 50 and 885 of 1984 as common sets of facts and questions of law are involved therein.

(2.) Two parcels of agricultural land are owned by Biru Ram, respondent No. 2. By two agreements he agreed to sell them to Natha Singh respondent No. 1. On the failure of Biru Ram to execute the sale-deeds, two suits were filed by Natha Singh against him on 18th November, 1981 in the Court of Sub-Judge Ist Class, Samrala. Biru Ram contested the suits and set up the plea that those agreements had come about as a result of fraud. During the pendency of those suits, the present petitioner Narinder Pal, an infant, filed two respective applications in the suits through his natural father Chaman Lal stating therein that on 12th November, 1981, he had been adopted as a son by Biru Ram and by virtue thereof he had become a coparcener with Biru Ram since the property in dispute was ancestral in the hands of the latter. On that premises, the applicant prayed for his being impleaded as a contesting defeasting defendant in the suits asserting that as a member of the co-percenary he could obstruct and frustrate specific performance of the agreements. Those agreements were made on 6th October, 1980, i.e. more than a year before the alleged adoption of Narinder Pal. The learned trial Judge dismissed the applications. The aggrieved infant has approached this Court in revision.

(3.) The learned counsel for the petitioner has contended that a co-parcener can successfully resist a suit for specific performance based on an agreement of sale because the eventual sale can be challenged by him which was likely to be set aside and there would be no useful purpose for enforcing such a contract of sale. Reliance was placed on Balmukand v. Pindi Dass, 1958 AIR(P&H) 267 which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in AIR 1964 Supreme Court 1385. A decision of a learned Single Judge of this Court in Devi Dayal v. Manohar Lal, 1982 CurLJ 83, was also pressed into service for the proposition as above stated. The learned counsel for the respondent has no quarrel with the law laid down therein that a co-parcener can get himself impleaded as party in a suit for specific performance and put up resistance on the strength of his status, as he ordinarily can, to save the coparcenary from being wasted by the Karta.