CHIEF SETTLEMENT COMMISSIONER AND OTHERS Vs. LAKHA SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal under clause 10 of the Letters Patent filed by the Chief Settlement Commissioner, the Assistant Settlement Commissioner and the Managing Officer, Jullundur, against the judgment, dated July 24, 1964, of a learned Single Judge of this Court allowing the writ petition (C.W. 1610 of 1963) of Lakhan Singh respondent and quashing the impugned orders of appellant No. 1, and remitting the matter to the Rehabilitation Department for reconsideration of the writ petitioner's case has arisen in the following circumstances :

(2.) While impugning the above said orders of the appellants, In Civil Writ 1610 of 1963, dated August 19, 1963, the respondent undertook to produce the original documents at the hearing of the writ petition and filed copies of the same in this Court. The writ petition was contested by the appellants. In their written statement, dated nil, the appellants stated that the copy of form No. VIII (jamabandi) produced by ate respondent was not a genuine document. It was also averred by the appellants that the respondent had failed to prove as to why his name did not appear in the jamabandi received from Pakistan. Regarding the authentication by the office of the Indian High Commissioner at Karachi the appellant stated in return that "the documents are attested by the High Commission in routine on payment of certain fee and their genuineness is not got verified from the originals in Pakistan." A further objection raised in the return was that "unless it is specifically stated by the Indian High Commissioner that the document has been attested after its contents have been verified from the original record, no reliance can be placed on it" When the case came up for hearing before the leaned Single Judge (Mahajan, J.) on July 21, 1964, no objection at all was raised on behalf of the appellants against the admissibility into evidence of the certified copy of the revenue record produced by the respondent. The learned Judge carefully went into the entire history of the case and perused the original document, which was produced before him, and held that it appeared to him that this was a fit case where the order of the Chief Settlement Commissioner should be quashed and the matter remitted to the department for fresh consideration in the light of form No. VIII which had been duly got attested by the claimant. It was further directed that in view of the law laid down by this Court in Gulab Singh v. Chief Settlement Commissioner, Punjab Jullundur,1964 PunLR 953, the department may have a comparison of the relevant document at Wagha in view of the alleged conflict between the copies of the revenue entries. The learned Judge refuse to allow the objection of the State counsel about the genuineness of the document on the ground that in the absence of reliable evidence to the contrary, from the office of the High Commissioner for India in Karachi, the genuineness of the document had to be presumed as required by sub-section (6) of Section 78 of the Indian Evidence Act. It is against the above said order of the learned Single Judge, dated July 24, 1964, remitting the case for reconsideration to the Rehabilitation Department that the present appeal has been filed.

(3.) The first objection raised by Shri D.S. Nehra, the learned counsel for the appellants before us, is that the learned Single Judge had no jurisdiction to reverse a pure finding of fact arrived at by the Chief Settlement Commissioner about the genuineness of the copy of the revenue record produced by the respondent." The learned counsel appears to be under some misapprehension about the jurisdiction of the Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. If any proposition of law relating to the scope of the authority of this Court under Article of the Constitution is well settled, it is this that the jurisdiction is absolutely unfettered and leaves and High Court free to reach injustice wherever it is, in the absence of any peculiar circumstances of a case which might disentitle a particular petitioner to obtain relief from the Court. The last case in which their Lordships of the Supreme Court have authoritatively held that the High Court is not in exercise of its jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution precluded from entering upon a decision on questions of fact raised in a writ petition, is State of Orissa v. Dr. (Miss) Binapani Dei and others, 1967 SLR 465, Civil Appeal No. 499 of 1965, decided on February 7, 1967. It has been held by the Supreme Court in that case that where an enquiry into complicated questions of fact arises in a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution before the right of an aggrieved party to obtain relief claimed may be determined, the High Court may in appropriate cases decline to enter upon that enquiry, and may refer the party claiming relief to a suit; but the question is one of discretion and not of jurisdiction of the High Court. We have therefore, no hesitation in holding that it is not beyond the jurisdiction of a High Court to reverse a pure finding of fact in exercise of its writ jurisdiction in an appropriate case where it becomes necessary to do so, in order to undo manifest injustice which might have been caused to a person who invokes the jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution. Like many other considerations such as laches, conduct of the petitioner, availability of adequate alternative remedy, a matter of a disputed question of fact being involved in a writ petition is one of the criteria which have to be kept in view by a High Court while deciding to interfere or not to interfere in a case under Article 226. Moreover, the learned Single Judge has rightly not taken up on himself the matter of finally deciding the question of the respondent's claim. Error of law in the stand in their return to the effect was apparent on the face of the record before the learned Single Judge. The appellants had taken up a definite stand in their return to the effect that the document in question had been attested by the High Commissioner for India in Pakistan in a routine manner and that the document was not deemed to have been proved without further evidence of comparison of the copy produced before the authorities with the original revenue records in Pakistan being brought forth. Even if the strict rules of evidence may be deemed to apply to proceedings before the Rehabilitation Authorities under the Displaced Persons (Compensation & Rehabilitation) Act (44 of 1954) a proposition which I seriously doubt, it is clear that the mode of proof of a public document of a foreign country has been prescribed under sub-section (6) of Section 78 of the Evidence Act and the appellants had no jurisdiction to ask for any other or different mode of proof. Under the abovesaid provision, public document of a foreign country may be proved by a copy certified by the legal keeper thereof copy is duly certified under the seal of the Indian Diplomatic Agent that the copy is duly certified by the Officer having the legal custody of the original. The disputed copy had already been certified by the Mukhtiarkar to be correct. It had now been duly attested and authenticated in the prescribed manner by the Indian High Commissioner in Karachi. The learned Chief Settlement Commissioner was obviously in error in refusing to consider the said document on the ground that he had already seen it though he had seen without the authenticated in first instance. In spite it this the learned Single Judge did not proceed to decide the factual controversy between the appellants and the respondent himself and rightly left it to the department to reconsider and redecide the case. We are, therefore, unable to hold that the learned Single Judge has in any manner exceeded his jurisdiction. The order under appeal is the only proper one which should have been passed in the circumstances of this case.