BANKEY LAL Vs. PIARE LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decision of Mr. Justice Lal Gopal Mukerji, who has held that a judgment given on appeal by the District Judge of Pilibhit on the 31st of August 1914, and the decree of this Court following on that judgment of the Court of the District Judge were both without jurisdiction, and cannot be held to operate adversely to the defendants in this particular suit. The claim was brought by Bankey Lal and others against Piare Lal and others for possession of 10 bighas and 11 biswas of land, being the western portion of a grove bearing No. 1549, and comprising in all 20 bighas 10 biswas.

(2.) The story, as set out in the plaint, was that the father of Banke Lal, Seth Ratan Lal, filed in the Court of the Parganah Officer, on the 19 of September 1923, a suit for the ejectment of certain tenants from the plot in question, alleging a breach by them and invoking Section 57 of Act II of 1901. That suit by Ratan Lal, based upon the fact that the tenants had used the land for a purpose inconsistent with the letting of it for agricultural purposes was heard and dismissed. The plaint in that suit contained the valuation, and that valuation was Rs. 18, which was the proper and legal valuation which is statutorily prescribed. It was in fact the amount of the rent paid in the year immediately preceding the suit. When the Parganah Officer had given his decision adversely to Ratan Lal, that judgment, by reason of the valuation being under Rs. 100, was a final and unappealable judgment. Somebody conceived the bright idea that, if a fictitious valuation were put upon the memorandum of appeal, the District Judge might allow the matter to go through, and the counsel appearing for the defendants might likewise not notice that the District Judge was being asked to entertain an appeal as to which he had no jurisdiction whatever.

(3.) The memorandum of appeal was presented to the Court, and it contained an assertion which was in violation of the statute that the valuation of the suit and of the appeal was Rs. 125. Counsel on behalf of the plaintiffs got up to argue the case. Counsel for the respondents were heard, and on the 31 of August 1914 the District Judge of Pilibhit decreed the claim for ejectment, and, therefore, the trick of the plaintiff, by which he was enabled to get before the District Judge, had succeeded, and he got what appeared on the face of it to be a perfectly good decree, reversing the non-appealable judgment of the Parganah Officer in his favour. The defendant came up to the High Court and he adopted the valuation of Rs. 125 which had been improperly put as the valuation before the District Judge. Nobody in the High Court noticed the circumstance of the over valuation, and the decree of District Judge was upheld by the High Court. We have not been given the date of that High Court's decision, but presumably it was in the first half of the year 1915. Subsequently on the plaintiffs, who are the sons of Ratan Lal, making an application in the revenue Court for mutation of names in respect of a portion of the grove, namely the western plot, the matter came up in contest, the defendants asserting that they were entitled to and were in fact in possession of the entire plot. The revenue Court, on the 23 of September 1921, found that the plaintiffs were not in possession of any portion of the grove, and they were remitted to a civil Court for proof of their alleged right.