MARU Vs. COLLECTOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition was allowed in the first instance vide judgment dated 25.1.1983. Thereafter, a review application was filed at the instance of the complainant Daryao Singh, respondent No. 3, and vide judgment dated 20.1.1986, the aforesaid judgment was recalled and the petition was directed to be listed for rehearing.

(2.) The petitioners had taken up the stand before the Assistant Collector that their house was built some fifty years ago and they had been in possession since then and that besides the said house there was no other house owned by them in the village. The Assistant Collector disposed of the evidence pertaining to the old possession by a line that the petitioners had failed to prove the factum of their possession, as they have not adduced any documentary evidence. The Collector merely affirmed that finding and although a point was raised before him that the petitioners owned only one residential house in question yet he gave no finding thereon.

(3.) The order of the Assistant Collector to the extent that he insisted on a written proof regarding possession and declined to go into the oral evidence in that regard is clearly erroneous and so was that of the Collector in appeal affirming the said observation. I, therefore, set aside both the orders and remand the case back to the Assistant Collector for a fresh decision.