MUHAMMAD BAKHSH AND 5 Others vs S. A. A. KHAN, C. S. P. MEMBER, BOARD
This petition arises from the decision of the High Court of West Pakistan refusing to interfere in writ jurisdiction with an order of the Member, Board of Revenue, which directed the petitioners to seek their remedy in a civil court regarding a disputed land. The core legal question concerns the propriety of the Revenue Board's order relegating the parties to a civil court when title is seriously disputed and no relationship of landlord and tenant is established. The Supreme Court held that where complicated questions of fact and law regarding title are involved and the respondents genuinely dispute the petitioners' title while claiming possession in their own right, the Revenue Board acted within its jurisdiction in directing the parties to resolve the matter through a civil court. The key principle laid down is that revenue authorities and writ courts should not adjudicate upon complex, disputed questions of title, which are properly left for determination by civil courts.
- Whether the Board of Revenue can direct parties to seek remedy in a civil court when complicated questions of title are involved?
- Can the High Court interfere in writ jurisdiction with an order of the Board of Revenue relegating a title dispute to a civil court?
- Is a revenue court the appropriate forum to adjudicate upon a serious dispute of title where the relationship of landlord and tenant is absent?
1. SAJJAD AHMAD, J.-The petitioners are aggrieved by the decision of a Division Bench of the High Court of West Pakistan made in writ jurisdiction, refusing to interfere with the order of the Member, Board of Revenue, dated the 4th of February 1970, by which in acceptance of the revision petition filed by the respondents, it was directed that the petitioners should seek their remedy in the civil Court.
2. The land in dispute was a part of the estate of one, Fateh Muhammad, who died in the year 1887. In the absence of any other customary heir, his step-mother Mst. Imran succeeded to his estate. She, in turn, made a gift of it to her step-daughter Mst. Hussain Bibi, the mother of respondents Nos. 2 and 3, somewhere in the years 1939 and mutation No. 1361 was attested in this behalf on the 20th of December 1939. This gift was successfully challenged in the civil Court by the predecessors -- interest of the petitioners and was held to be ineffective against their reversionary rights.
3. On the death of Mst. Umran in the year 1948, her inheritance mutation was entered in favour of the petitioners and attested on the 9th of February 1963. The petitioners thereafter brought a civil suit for possession of various items of property left by Mst. Umran, against Mst. Hussain Bibi and others, but failed to include in that suit the land now in dispute. The civil Court granted a decree in favour of the petitioners for apart of the property which was found to be ancestral qua the petitioners, disallowing their relief for the rest which was found to be the self-acquired property of Mst. Umran.
4. The respondents disowned the title of the petitioners and claimed that they were in possession of the land in dispute in their own right ever since 1941. One of the pleas taken was that the petitioners not having included the land in question in their earlier civil suit for possession of the estate left by Mst. Umran, were precluded now from claiming it. The petitioners suit was decreed by the Assistant Collector and the decree was confirmed in appeal and revision by the Collector and the Additional Commissioner, respectively. In a further revision before the Revenue Board, a learned Member reversed the order of the Revenue Courts below and held that in view of the complicated questions of fact and law involved in the case, pertaining to the title to the land, it should be decided by the civil Court. It was further directed that the respondents who had been ejected by the orders of the Courts below should be restored to possession.
5. The learned counsel for the petitioners has not been able to show how the impugned order of the Board of Revenue lacks jurisdiction to be the subject-matter of a challenge in the writ jurisdiction of the High Court. The respondents had all along disputed the title of the petitioners repudiating the latter's assertion that they were tenants-at-will under them. As the question of title to the disputed land was seriously in issue and there was no established relationship of the landlord and tenant between the parties, no exception can be taken to the direction made by the Member, Board of Revenue, that this was a fit matter to be adjudicated by the civil Court.