MUHABBAT ALI vs SETTLEMENT AND REHABILITATION COMMISSIONER, BAHAWALPUR DIVISION, BAHAWALPUR and others
The petitioner challenged the legality of a land allotment made in favour of the respondent, initially pursuing remedies through appeal and revision before the Settlement authorities, where he claimed a preferential right. After failing in those proceedings, the petitioner filed a Mukhbari application under the Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958, raising a different ground of challenge, which was also dismissed. A subsequent writ petition filed before the High Court met the same fate. The core legal question addressed was whether a party, having failed to challenge an allotment through normal remedies of appeal and revision, can subsequently re-agitate the same matter by invoking a different provision of law and altering the ground of attack. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition, holding that a litigant cannot be permitted to repeatedly challenge an adverse order through alternative legal avenues by changing grounds after failing in the primary hierarchy of remedies. The principle laid down is that the doctrine of finality and the bar against repetitive, collateral challenges prevent a party from re-agitating settled matters by shifting legal stands.
- Can a party challenge a land allotment through a Mukhbari application after failing to set it aside in appeal and revision?
- Whether a litigant is permitted to re-agitate an adverse allotment by changing the ground of attack under a different provision of law?
- Section 10, Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958
- Section 11, Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958
ORDER
1. ' NASIM HASAN SHAH, J.-- The petitioner challenged the propriety and legality of the allotment made in favour of All Muhammad (now dead and represented by his legal representatives) on the grounds, inter-alia, that he had a preferential claim to the allotment by filing an appeal and revision before the Settlement authorities. Having failed therein he, after some time, challenged the allotment through a Mukhbari application under sections 10 and 11 of the Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958, urging a different ground for challenging the allotment in his favour. Here too, he was unsuccessful. His Writ Petition even having failed hence this petition.
2. This petition is liable to dismissal on the short ground that having failed to shake the allotment made in favour of the respondents by resort to the normal remedy of appeal and revision, he could not be permitted to re-agitate the same matter, by invoking another provision of law and changing his ground of attack. Dismissed.