Hemant Gupta, J.@mdashThis order shall dispose of the aforesaid writ petitions directed against the common order passed by the Director Rural Development and Panchayats exercising the powers of the Commissioner under the Punjab Village Common Land (Regulations) Act, 1961 (for short ''the Act'') on 08.05.2013. The said appeals filed by the petitioners were directed against the order dated 28.02.2011 passed by the Divisional Deputy Director, Panchayat exercising the powers of Collector under the aforesaid Act. The Gram Panchayat initiated the proceedings u/s 7 of the Act against the petitioners herein which were adjourned sine die with liberty to the Gram Panchayat to seek ownership declared from the competent court. Thereafter, the panchayat filed a petition u/s 11 of the Act which has since been allowed by the Collector and the appeal stands dismissed by the Commissioner.
2. The petitioners resisted the proceedings u/s 11 of the Act on the basis of the decree of the Civil Court granted on 11.05.1972 declaring the present petitioners to be owners of the suit land. The Learned Collector relied upon the judgment in Gram Panchayat Naulakha and Ujjagar Singh and others (2000) 7 SCC 543 that a collusive decree can be ignored in subsequent proceedings and there is no necessity to file separate suit to challenge such decree. Initially appeal filed by the Petitioners directed against the order passed by the Collector was dismissed on 18.1.2012 but this Court set aside the said order on 14.09.2012 in CWP No. 9583 of 2012 and other connected petitions and directed the Commissioner to decide the issues afresh thereafter. The learned Commissioner exercising the powers of the Appellate Authority observed as under:
"After perusal of the written arguments of both the parties and the record on the file, I have come to the conclusion that as per Jamabandi 1980-81 the land in dispute is Nagar Panchayat Deh i.e. Gram Panchayat. In the cultivation column, name of different persons have been entered. The appellant has not produced any Jamabandies in the lower court in order to show their continues possession/ownership, on the basis of which the benefit could be given to them. From the Civil Court judgment it transpires that the decree dated 11.05.1972 has been taken by conniving with the Ex-Sarpanch whereas the Shamlat Deh cannot be partitioned again in the name of the shareholders. u/s 13 of the Punjab Village Common Land (Regulation) Act, 1961, the Civil Court has no jurisdiction to decide the dispute of Shamlat Deh or Panchayat land. In the record of the lower court no satisfactory evidence is available in the basis of which the appellants had the rights of owner of the land in dispute. The appeal has no merits therefore the appeal is dismissed and the impugned order is upheld."
3. Learned counsel for the petitioners has vehemently argued that the Civil Court was competent Court of jurisdiction when a decree was granted in the year 1972 and that the decree was granted in terms of proviso to Sub Section 5 of Section 2(g) of the Act. Therefore, such decree could not have been set aside in the proceedings initiated by the Panchayat u/s 11 of the Act.
4. We have heard learned counsel for the petitioners and find no merit in the present petition.
5. The entry as per revenue record produced by the petitioners such as jamabandi for the years 1944-45 Annexure P-2 records in the column of ownership Shamlat Deh Hasab Rasad Khewat. The land is Banjar Kadim as per the description of the land detailed in column 7 of the said jamabandi. The said land is owned by the Panchayat in terms of Section 2(g)(1) read with Section 4 of the Act. Such similar entries have been interpreted by the Division bench of this Court in Tek Ram and others v. Gram Sabha, Manakpur and others 1976 PLJ 628 and
6. The consistent view of this Court is that the land described in the revenue record as Shamlat Deh Hasab Rasad Khweat is a land owned by Panchayat and that the control and management in terms of Section 2(g)(1) read with Section 4 of the Act.
7. The argument that the decree was granted by the Civil Court when it was competent to grant so is without any merit in as such as the finding of the Collector and the Commissioner is that it is a fraudulent decree. A perusal of the decree Annexure P-1 shows that Sarpanch Kishori Lal who appeared as DW-1 admitted in the cross-examination that the Khewatdars used that land for their own benefit and had a share in the Shamlat Deh. It is the said admission which has been taken into consideration for granting the decree in favour of the petitioners herein. The Sarpanch is not a person competent to suffer a statement to give the share of land to Panchayat in such a cursory manner. The panchayat as a owner could not be defrauded of its holding by such cryptic statement of the Sarpanch. The same has been rightly found to be fraudulent decree. Apart from the Supreme Court judgment in Gram Panchayat Naulakha''s case, the Division Bench of this Court in 2013 (3) PLR 279, Gurdial Singh and others v. Joint Director Panchayat, Punjab Chandigarh and others.
16.................... As the jurisdiction which earlier vested in the Civil Court has been conferred upon the Collector and the Collector exercises the powers of the civil court while adjudicating upon the question of title to land which vests or deemed to have been vested in a Panchayat, the Collector has the jurisdiction to examine and adjudicate the legality or otherwise of a decree of civil court set up by a party in defence. In this view of the matter, we find no reason to accept the contention of the petitioners that the Collector has no jurisdiction to decide the evidential value of a decree or he is not competent to decide this issue during pendency of a civil suit which has been stayed by the civil court vide order dated 3.3.1983. In Horli''s case (supra), the Hon''ble Supreme Court of India has held that revenue courts are neither equipped nor competent to effectively adjudicate on allegations of fraud that has overtones of criminality and the Courts really skilled and experienced to try such issues are the Courts constituted under the Civil Procedure Code. The Hon''ble Supreme Court was dealing with power of a revenue officer conferred with limited jurisdiction whereas in the present case, we are dealing with a Collector, conferred with power to decide a question of title, and as a consequence, all related questions, be of fraud and collusion. It would also be appropriate to once again record that jurisdiction of civil courts to decide a question of title is barred by Section 13 of the 1961 Act. The referred authority has no bearing on the present controversy as there is no allegation of fraud with overtones of criminality involved in this case. This apart, the question whether a Collector competent to decide a question of title u/s 11 of the 1961 Act can judge the legality or otherwise of a decree of civil court was neither raised nor answered in the referred authority.
Earlier, a Single Bench of this Court in a judgment reported as
"3. In the writ petitions, the petitioners have placed reliance upon the Full Bench judgment of this Court reported as
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10. In view of the aforesaid Hon''ble Supreme Court judgment, reliance of the petitioners on the Full Bench judgment of this Court in Jagar Rams case (supra) is not sustainable. The Collector in proceedings u/s 7 of the Act is competent to examine the legality and validity of the judgment and decree passed by the Civil Court and that it is not necessary for the Gram Panchayat to file a separate civil suit before the Civil Court to seek avoidance of the Civil Court decree on which reliance is placed by the petitioners."
In view thereof, we do not find any merit in the present writ petitions. Dismissed.
