CHANDGI Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER, HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These thirteen Civil Writ Petitions Nos. 5288 of 1982 and 590 to 601 of 1983, are by the same landowners whose land has been allotted to thirteen different persons (impleaded as respondent No. 4 in each petition) on the assumption that their allotted lands had been declared as surplus by the Collector under the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953 in the year 1959. According to the petitioners, this order of the Collector had been set aside vide order dated November 5, 1964, of the Financial Commissioner, Revenue, Punjab (Annexure P-6). The operative part of this order reads as under :-

(2.) These claim of the petitioners further is that as a matter of fact they were never dispossessed from the areas allotted to the private respondents and the proceedings initiated by the revenue staff with regard to the delivery of possession etc. to those allottees were just paper transactions and without any substance. Later these allottees initiated proceedings against the petitioners under section 22 of the Act with the allegations that they had been dispossessed from the areas allotted in their favour and the petitioners were wrongly and unauthorisedly continuing in possession of the surplus area. This prayer of these allottees was accepted by the Collector and while directing the petitioners to deliver the possession of the allotted areas to the private respondents, he also penalised them. This order of the Collector was later even affirmed by the Financial Commissioner vide the impugned order Annexure P-4 in each one of these cases.

(3.) The short submission now raised by Mr. Hooda, learned counsel for the petitioners is that when the order of the Collector declaring the petitioners' land as surplus in the year 1959 had been set aside by the Financial Commissioner vide order Annexure P-6, neither any land could possibly vest in the State Government in terms of section 12(3) of the Act nor could the same be validly allotted to the private respondents. In the light of that the petitioners could not be directed vide the impugned order Annexure P. 4 to deliver possession of any land to the private respondents nor could they be fined for any supposed dispossession of those respondents.