PREMO Vs. RAJWANTI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiffs are in second appeal against the judgment and decree of the Court of first appeal dated 10th September, 2011 affirming the findings recorded in the judgment and decree of the learned trial Court dated 24th April, 2010.

(2.) A set of plaintiffs are in litigation as against a set of defendants who have locked horns in a suit for division of property measuring 3 kanals 4 marals falling in Khasra No.375 which has by passage of time come within the abadi deh of Rohtak City and now falls in urban area. The property is admittedly ancestral in nature and the parties to the suit are members of the family torn by finding the positions of their feet on one or other of the joint property as happens when families grow in numbers and protect their respective possession.

(3.) BRIEFLY put, the plaintiffs filed a suit for partition and separate possession of the land lying close to the vicinity of the Jat College, Rohtak. There has been no division of shares for the last 50 years of the property inherited by them through the progenitor. The plaintiffs claim that the property was never partitioned during the life time of the father of the defendants and each came to take separate possession share -wise, where parties have raised construction of residential houses for the last 40 years and reside in them since. One of the defendants, namely, Dharam Pal D - 8(b), in addition to the ancestral property had purchased an independently from his own resources a plot measuring 188 square yards from the Municipal Committee, Rohtak, along side the ancestral property on which land their house has been built. This plot is private property of Dharam Pal and is not to be put in the pool of division of ancestral property. If this plot is put into the pool, it will upset the share ratio but that does not mean Dharam Pal has given up his rights to ancestral property and is entitled to a share, in which plaintiffs assert that they are joint owners and being cosharers have rights of each inch of the land. To the contrary, the defendants plead that the property is no longer joint as it once was, since during the life time of their father, the property was divided and each of them came to be settled on the property in the respective shares and have built houses thereon. The joint family is split into nuclear families in its branches.