MOHAMMAD BHAI Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal has been filed against an order of the learned Jagir Commissioner dated 28. 10. 58. Put briefly, the facts of the case are that the appellants filed an application on 18. 3. 58 wherein he stated that a forest block named 'ladan' in the Jagir of Shikana Juda, tehsil Kotra, district Udaipur, had been leased out to him on 21. 5. 54 by the Jagirdar of the said Thikana to work out within a period of seven years; that the said forest block is, after the resumption of the Jagir, said to have been included in the personal property of the Jagirdar and that the same fact may kindly be verified if this forest block was included in the personal property of the said Jagirdar. Thereupon a copy of the said application was forwarded to the Deputy Collector Jagir for enquiry and report. Before any report was received from the said officer, the learned Jagir Commissioner himself commenced the enquiry and a notice was given to the appellant as well as Thakur Takhat Singh, Jagirdar of the thikana. The Jagir Commissioner after holding an enquiry came to the conclusion that the said property was not the personal property of the Jagirdar and that it should stand resumed free from all encumbrances to the Government of Rajasthan under sec. 22 (i) (a) of the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs Act, 1952 and that the appellant had no right, title or interest on the said property. Without going into the merits of the finding, the learned Government Advocate raised a preliminary objection about the maintainability of this appeal on the ground that the appellant being not Jagirdar, had no lotus standi to file the present appeal. It was urged that the Jagirdar whose property in question was involved in this proceeding, he was the proper person, if so advised, to question in appeal the validity of the order of the learned Jagir Commissioner and not the appellant, who may have acquired certain civil rights against the Jagirdar under a contract executed between the parties prior to the date of resumption of the Jagir. The learned counsel for the appellant, however urged that as the aforesaid decision would hit the rights of the appellant to work out the forest leased out to him by the Jagirdar on payment of a sum of Rs. 73,000/-, he was equally, if not more, adversely hit by the impugned finding of the learned lower court. We are unable to find much substance in this contention of the learned counsel for the appellant. The scheme of the provision of law as contained in the Rajasthan Land Reforms & Resumption of Jagirs Act,is that disputes which arise between a Jagirdar, his co-sharer, maintenance holders vis-a-vis the State have to be disposed of in the light of provisions of the Act. There is no sanction envisaged in this piece of legislation to admit claims, however sound, if any person other than those directly connected in the aforesaid manner to the Jagir which may have been resumed under the provisions of the Act. Section 39 of the Act lays down that "the Government or any person aggrieved by a decision of the Jagir Commissioner or the Collector, as the case may be, under sec. 5, sub-sec. (2) of sec. 23, sec. 24, sub-sec. (2) of sec. 25, section 26 - A, sub-sec. (2) of section 32. sub-sec. (3) of sec. 35, sec. 36, sec. 37, sec. 38, or sec. 38 (2), may within ninety days from the date of such decision appeal to the Board. All these sections under which an appeal is maintainable in the Board of Revenue, must be directed against an order of the Jagir Commissioner or the Collector acting under any of the sections referred to in the above mentioned sections, namely sec. 39 of the Act. The present proceedings, though essentially under sec. 23 (2) of the Act, give a right of appeal to the Jagirdar and not to the appellant who was not a party to the action contemplated under sec. 23 (2 ). As a general principle only a party against whom a decision is given under the Act, has a right to prefer an appeal. In the present proceedings, as already stated above, the appellant was neither a party nor could he be deemed to be a party by any stretch of imagination for obvious reason and although he may have acquired a privity in the estate, title or interest, he was surely not a Jagirdar, nor a person in any way connected with the Jagir which had since been resumed. All that the appellant really wanted to ascertain from the Jagir Commissioner was whether a certain property claimed by the Jagirdar of Juda was declared as his personal property or resumed along with the other Jagir lands under sec. 22 of the Act. If the Jagir Commissioner had given him a reply to the effect that the said property was not declared as the personal property of the Jagirdar or that matter was still under enquiry, the matter would have ended then and there. If however, the learned Jagir Commissioner, for reasons which we cannot gather from the record, thought it necessary to conduct elaborate enquiries himself, in order to determine the claim of the Jagirdar, a finding arrived at by him, however, prejudicial to the appellant, does not give him any right to come in appeal before us. In this view of the matter we are of the opinion that the preliminary objection raised by the learned Government Advocate is bound to prevail. Accordingly, we direct that as the appellant had no right of appeal under the provision of the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs Act, the present appeal is not maintainable and must therefore he dismissed. .