BASANT KAUR Vs. SHIOCHARAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IT is clear that the defendants must inevitably be ejected from the land in dispute, and it is admitted by both sides that this can be done by a Revenue Officer. Instead of applying to a Revenue Officer the plaintiffs have spent nearly two years and much money in trying to establish their contention that it can also be done by a civil Court, and instead of going off the land before they are thrown out the defendants have spent the same time and probably no less money in trying to establish that it cannot.

(2.) THE facts are these. Gujraj Kawar, the original defendant, was the Mukaddam Gomashta of Bharsela, which is owned by the first plaintiff Basant Kuar Bai, and he held an area of 5407 acres rent-free as a village-service holding. An order was passed by a Revenue Officer on the 10th of March 1924 removing Gajraj from his office as too old for its duties, as he was then about eighty years of age, and appointing Kishorilal Bania, the second plaintiff, in his place. It was also ordered that he should hand over his village-service holding to his successor. The plaintiffs assert that he did give Kishorilal possession of the holding but ousted him again in the following August. Gujraj denied that he ever gave up possession at all.

(3.) THE decision of the lower appellate Court is undoubtedly correct on any finding in respect of the one fact in dispute. The holding is recorded as a village-service holding in the papers of the current Settlement. It is urged that a Mukaddam Gomashta is not a village-servant, but a servant of the Mukaddam. There is no definition of a ' village-servant ' but it seems clear that the Mukaddam in that respect is in exactly the same class as the Kotwar, who is admittedly one, being merely higher than the Kotwar in the performance of practically the same duties.