Kaushalya Devi And Ors. vs Bachittar Singh And Ors.

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 8 April 1959

Coram: P.B. Gajendragadkar, K.N. Wanchoo

In this matter titled Kaushalya Devi and others versus Bachittar Singh and others, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on 8 April 1959. The bench comprised P B Gajendragadkar and K N Wanchoo, and the opinion was authored by Justice K L Wanchoo. The case arose as an appeal filed by special leave against a decision of the Punjab High Court. The High Court judgment had set aside the order of the Deputy Custodian General that had cancelled an allotment, thereby restoring the original allocation. The appeal therefore sought to review the correctness of that High Court determination.

The principal facts of the dispute were undisputed and formed part of the record, leaving only a single issue for determination. The controversy centred on whether the order cancelling the allotment in favour of the respondents had been issued prior to 22 July 1952. To understand the origin of this question, the factual background may be outlined. The deceased Ragha Ram, now represented by the respondents, had been a temporary allottee in the village of Fatoewal located in Hoshiarpur district. In addition, he had received a quasi-permanent parcel of land in the neighbouring village of Budhewal. Among the appellants, Nil Kanth and Bindraban were recognised as sitting allottees in Budhewal, and they, together with three other appellants, possessed quasi-permanent allotments in various other villages of the same district. All five individuals jointly applied to the Director-General of Rehabilitation (Rural), requesting that they be restored to Budhewal. On 3 July 1950 the Director-General issued an order stating that the petitioners were sitting allottees in Budhewal but had been granted quasi-permanent allotments elsewhere; consequently, the Revenue Assistant (Rehabilitation) was instructed to consolidate them back to Budhewal provided that no grading difficulty arose, otherwise to relocate them to a suitably graded village, and to make any adjustment immediately if land was available. This directive appears to have remained unimplemented until early 1952. On 27 February 1952 a report indicated that accommodating Nil Kanth and the others in Budhewal would necessitate the removal of non-sitting allottees because the village had no remaining area, and proper orders were therefore sought. In response, the Revenue Assistant (Rehabilitation) issued an order asserting that a prior decision had already authorised the placement of Nil Kanth and the others in Budhewal, which would consequently require the ouster of Ragha Ram from that village. A notice was ordered to be served on Ragha Ram, inviting him to lodge any objections, although the exact date of that notice is uncertain. It is recorded that on 28 April 1952 the respondent Bachittar Singh appeared before the Revenue Assistant, stating that his father Ragha Ram was deceased, that he and his two brothers were the legal heirs, and that he also acted as muktiar-i-am for his brothers. He further urged that the respondents should not be displaced, and if displacement proved unavoidable, that they should be accommodated in the village of Fatoewal, which adjoined Budhewal.

According to the record, the village of Fatoowal adjoined the village of Budhewal. An order was issued summoning the parties to appear on 6 May 1952. On that date, Bachittar Singh submitted a written statement reiterating his objection to the proposed removal of his family from Budhewal. Following his submission, an order was made that the persons affected had been duly informed and that the order of the Director-General Rehabilitation should be carried out. The appellants contend that on the same day, 6 May 1952, the Deputy Commissioner, who was in charge of rehabilitation, issued a further order cancelling the allotment that had been made in favour of the respondents in Budhewal. It also appears that later on the same day, after the Deputy Commissioner’s order, Bachittar Singh filed an application stating that the allotment in Budhewal in his father’s name had been cancelled by the Director-General Rehabilitation’s order dated 3 July 1950, and that he had received a notice of that cancellation on 6 May 1952. He therefore prayed that the entire land in the adjoining village of Fatoowal be allotted to him. It is reported that after this, the implementation of the 6 May 1952 order was set in motion, resulting in the cancellation of the appellants’ allotments in other villages on 17 June 1952. On that same date, proposals were prepared to fit the appellants into Budhewal, and the proposal form expressly referred to the Deputy Commissioner’s order of 6 May 1952. On 19 June 1952, the patwari submitted a report indicating that Ragha Ram’s allotment in Budhewal had been cancelled, and consequently proposed to place the appellants in Budhewal and to provide alternative land to Ragha Ram’s heirs as compensation. An implementation sheet dated 4 July 1952 was then prepared, assuming that the appellants would be accommodated in Budhewal and that Ragha Ram’s heirs would receive substitute land for the loss of their original allotment. Upon reviewing this proposal, the Revenue Assistant (Rehabilitation) observed that the Director-General Rehabilitation’s order did not mandate the eviction of any allottee and noted that no land was available in Budhewal for the appellants. The Deputy Commissioner concurred with this view, seemingly overlooking the earlier 6 May 1952 order. The appellants subsequently brought the matter before the Deputy Commissioner, who examined the file, concluded that there was some irregularity in the office, and directed that the officials concerned be called upon to explain themselves and that the orders favourable to the appellants dated 6 May 1952 be implemented. The issue was revisited, and on 11 September 1952 the Deputy Commissioner withdrew his earlier order of 15 July 1952 and directed that the Director-General Rehabilitation’s order of 3 July 1950, together with the Revenue Assistant’s (Rehabilitation) order of 6 May 1952, be given effect.

The implementation sheet dated 12 September 1952 was prepared following the Deputy Commissioner’s decision, and it essentially reiterated the contents of the earlier implementation sheet of 4 July 1952 concerning the appellants. The Deputy Commissioner gave his approval to the proposals contained in this September implementation sheet on 18 September 1952. The respondents were dissatisfied with the final order issued on that date and therefore filed a revision application before the Custodian General. This revision was heard by the Deputy Custodian General, whose principal contention was that the order of 18 September 1952, which cancelled the respondents’ allotment, was illegal because a rule that had come into force on 22 July 1952 prohibited the cancellation of any quasi-permanent allotment after that date except in limited circumstances, none of which existed in the present case. Consequently, the narrow issue for the Deputy Custodian General was whether the quasi-permanent allotment granted to the respondents had been cancelled before or after 22 July 1952. He fully understood the effect of the rule change and recognized that the question was one of fact: was the cancellation order made before 22 July 1952 or after it? After examining the materials, the Deputy Custodian General concluded that the allotment had been cancelled by the Deputy Commissioner on 6 May 1952, even though no such order was actually placed on the record. He provided several reasons for reaching that conclusion and ultimately dismissed the respondents’ revision. Unsatisfied, the respondents then filed a writ petition in the Punjab High Court, arguing that no order dated 6 May 1952 existed on the record to cancel the allotment and that the first cancellation occurred on 18 September 1952; therefore, the cancellation was unlawful in view of the rule effective from 22 July 1952. A learned single judge heard the writ petition, accepted the respondents’ submission that the cancellation order was dated 18 September 1952, and consequently held that the cancellation was illegal under the changed rule. The writ petition was allowed, and the order of the Deputy Custodian General upholding the cancellation was set aside. The appellants then filed a Letters Patent Appeal, which was dismissed by a Division Bench that, in a concise order, affirmed the decision of the learned single judge. Subsequent to this, the appellants sought leave to appeal to this Court, which was denied, and they thereafter applied for special leave, which was granted, bringing the matter before the Supreme Court.

The appellants first sought leave to appeal to this Court, but that application was turned down. Subsequently they filed a petition for special leave, and the Court granted that petition, thereby bringing the present dispute before this Court. Counsel for the appellants raised a very narrow issue. He argued that the Deputy Custodian General, who indisputably possessed jurisdiction over the matter, had ruled in favour of the appellants and had reached a factual conclusion that the order cancelling the allotment had been issued on 6 May 1952. According to that factual finding, the Deputy Custodian General was compelled to uphold the order of the Deputy Commissioner concerning the allotment. Counsel further maintained that a High Court, exercising jurisdiction under a writ of certiorari, could not set aside the decision of the Deputy Custodian General unless it identified an error of law that was apparent on the record. He submitted that in the present case no such legal error existed because the Deputy Custodian General’s determination was based solely on a question of fact. Even if the High Court had disagreed with the factual view adopted by the Deputy Custodian General, counsel asserted that the Court should not have interfered with what was merely a mistaken finding of fact.

The judgment of the learned Single Judge indicated that the High Court was aware of this principle and referred to the Supreme Court’s decision in Hari Vishnu Kamath v. Syed Ahmed Ishaque, which had articulated the governing law. Nonetheless, the Single Judge proceeded to state that a finding reached without any evidence constituted an error of law. After reviewing the material placed before it, the Single Judge concluded that the Deputy Custodian General’s finding in this case was unsupported by evidence and therefore represented an error of law apparent on the record, justifying interference by the High Court through certiorari. The Division Bench, in dismissing the Letters Patent Appeal filed by the present appellants, appeared to adopt the same view. Consequently, the matter reduced to the question of whether the Deputy Custodian General’s determination that a cancellation order dated 6 May 1952—i.e., before the rule change of 22 July 1952—was based on no evidence. The Court has already outlined the factual circumstances derived from the record and, with all respect, cannot say that there was no evidence on which the Deputy Custodian General could have based his conclusion that the respondents’ allotment in the village of Budhewal had indeed been cancelled on that date. The Deputy Custodian General referred to the evidence as it appeared in the Deputy Commissioner’s office, and the Court again states, with respect, that that

The Court observed that the material placed before it could not be described as irrelevant. It acknowledged that the original order issued by the Deputy Commissioner on 6 May 1952, which purportedly cancelled the allotment, was not found in the record. Nevertheless, the Court emphasized that the subsequent order dated 18 September 1952 did not, in its terms, annul the respondents’ allotment in the village of Budhewal, just as the order of 17 June 1952 expressly cancelled the allotment of the Nil Kanth appellant. Accordingly, the Court held that the Deputy Custodian General was justified in considering every report, proposal and order that appeared on the record. If, after reviewing that material, the Deputy Custodian General concluded that a cancellation order must have been issued on 6 May 1952—even though the document itself was absent from the record—such a conclusion could not be said to rest on no evidence or on evidence that was irrelevant. The Court further noted that it had previously examined the scope of a High Court’s power to interfere by way of a writ of certiorari in the case of Nagendra Nath Bora v. The Commissioner of Hills Division and Appeals, Assam. That precedent affirmed that the jurisdiction to grant certiorari is well settled, but the real difficulty lies in applying the principle to the specific facts of each case. The earlier decision observed that the High Court had exercised its supervisory jurisdiction to correct errors that were not errors of law apparent on the face of the record; instead those errors involved the appreciation of documentary evidence or affidavits, the drawing of inferences, or the failure to draw inferences. Such errors, the precedent explained, are those that a court sitting as an appellate tribunal alone can examine and, if necessary, rectify. Applying the same reasoning to the present matter, the Court felt that the High Court had merely corrected what might be errors in the appreciation of documentary evidence or in drawing inferences. Consequently, the Court concluded that there was no error of law apparent on the face of the record that would warrant interference by the High Court with the order of the Deputy Custodian General. The Court found that the Deputy Custodian General unquestionably possessed jurisdiction over the matter, did not exceed that jurisdiction, and acted in accordance with the essential legal requirements. Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, the orders of the High Court were set aside, and the order of the Deputy Custodian General was restored. The Court noted that the entire difficulty arose because the order of the Deputy Commissioner dated 6 May 1952 was missing from the record and was therefore overlooked when the Deputy Commissioner issued the order of 15 July 1952.

The Court observed that, exercising its adjudicatory power, it issued an order directing that each litigant shall be responsible for the expenses it incurred in connection with the litigation. Accordingly, the judgment specified that the parties were to bear their own costs for the entire course of the proceedings, without any allocation of costs against either side. In practical terms, this meant that the legal fees, filing charges, and any other monetary expenditures that each party incurred in pursuing or defending its position would be borne solely by that party. The direction applied to all stages of the case, from the initial filing through to the final resolution, and it was intended to ensure that neither party could claim reimbursement of its outlays from the other. By articulating this instruction, the Court clarified that the cost burden would not be shifted and that each side must meet its own financial obligations arising out of the dispute. This cost order was incorporated into the final operative part of the judgment, and it was binding upon the parties from the moment the order was rendered.