HC: Landless ‘old tenants’ have preferential right to surplus land

Saurabh Malik

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 12

A forty-year-old legal battle for a chunk of land has come to an end, with the Punjab and Haryana High Court asserting that landless old tenants have a preferential right to allotment of surplus land.

It all started when a part of Son Kaur’s land-holding in Khanheri village of Fatehabad district of Haryana was declared surplus. An order was issued on April 30, 1965, allotting Son Kaur’s “surplus land” to a person, who had left his estate in Pakistan and his claim for allotment of land under the rehabilitation scheme was under consideration.

But Son Kaur’s “old tenants” challenged the allotment before the Haryana Financial Commissioner in November, 1971, who remanded the case to the Collector for fresh adjudication.

The Collector in September, 1978, held that the “old tenant” were entitled to their “permissible area”. As such four kanals out of the land in dispute was liable to be allotted to “old tenant” Kundan.

After several rounds of litigation up to the High Court, the matter was remanded to the Financial Commissioner (Revenue) for fresh decision. The Commissioner vide impugned orders upheld Kundan’s claim to the extent of four kanals.

Taking up the case, the Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice PB Bajanthri asserted the appellants could raise claim to some other piece of land if they were entitled to additional land under the rehabilitation scheme in lieu of the land left by their predecessor in Pakistan.

The Bench added that the chunk of land as per the revenue record had been in Kundan’s possession since April 15, 1953. The allotment of “subject land” under the rehabilitation scheme in favour of the predecessor of the appellants behind the back of an old tenant, and that too without examining the revenue record, did not confer an indefeasible right to hold such land.

“Keeping in view the very legislative object and import of the agrarian reforms brought in through the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953, followed by the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972, the landless old tenants have a preferential right to seek allotment of surplus land. This is what precisely has happened in the present case,” the Bench asserted, while dismissing the case.