RAMJAG SINGH Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution. It is directed against an order passed on appeal by the Full Bench of Dhangain Gram Panchayat, police station Bikramgunj in the District of Shahabad,

(2.) The circumstances are these. The petitioner, Ranijag Singh, had lodged a complaint against opposite party Nos. 3 to 7, one of whom was Deocharan Singh, who was himself a panch of that Gram Panchayat. The complaint was that the aforesaid opposite party had cut away some branches of a mahua tree belonging to the complainant and which was standing on plot No. 45. The case was heard by a Bench of Dhangain Gram Panchayat which passed an order convicting the accused before it under Section 379, Indian Penal Code and sentencing Deocharan Singh and two others to 20 days' rigorous imprisonment and the rest of the accused to a fine of Rs. 25/- each. The convicted men filed an appeal from that order to the Full Bench of the Gram Panchayat, which set aside the order of conviction as also the sentence and passed an order acquitting the accused.

(3.) In the present petition filed in this Court, it was contended that the order of the Full Bench of the Gram Panchayat is illegal and without jurisdiction inasmuch as one of the accused himself, namely, Deocharan Singh, who as I have just stated, was himself a panch, sat on this Full Bench and heard the appeal. This procedure is in clear contravention of S. 56 of the Bihar Panchayat Raj Act (Act VII of 1948) which provides that no surpanch or panch shall take part in any proceeding in which he is personally interested. The order passed by the Full Bench had to be set aside. Mr. Nawadip Chandra Ghosh, who has appeared for the opposite party Nos. 3 to 7, has not contested this proposition, but he has submitted that while setting aside the order passed by the Full Bench on appeal, a further direction be made by this Court that the appeal presented by the accused persons before the Full Bench may now be re-heard by a properly constituted Full Bench, and for this submission he has placed reliance upon a case of the Supreme Court in Hari Vishnu Kamath v. Ahmad Ishaque, (S) AIR 1955 SC 233 (A).