RAJINDER SINGH Vs. SATNAM SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Regular Second Appeal has arisen from a suit for pre-emption following a sale of 117 Bighas 1 Biswa of land situated in village Darra Khurd, Tehsil Thanesar, District Karnal, by one Smt. Surjit Kaur to Rajinder Singh and Shubh Sher Jang Singh defendants through a sale-deed dated the 15th of June, 1966 (Exhibit D.1) for Rs. 34,261/-. After the sale and before the institution of the suit, 202 Kanals of land was allotted to the defendants as a result of proceedings for the consolidation of holdings in the village in lieu of the land covered by the sale-deed and the vendor's son Satnam Singh claimed the land so allotted by pre-emption on the basis of his relationship to the vendor. He asserted that the price actually paid by the defendants for the land was only Rs. 25,000/-.

(2.) It is contended by Shri K.C. Puri, who appears for the defendants-appellants, that in this case Surjit Kaur vendor is the daughter of a female who succeeded to the land in dispute "through" her father and that, therefore, only the mother's brothers or the mother's brother's sons of the vendor could claim any right of pre-emption which did not vest in the vendor's son. In view of the Division Bench dicta in Jai Singh v. Mughla and others and Balwant Singh v. Mahabir Singh, 1970 PunLJ 148, by which I am bound, this contention has no force, if the finding of the two Courts below that Har Kaur inherited the land from her father as a limited owner that she acquired absolute rights of disposal over it under Section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act is not to be disturbed. Faced with this situation Mr. Puri, learned Counsel for the appellants, argued that Smt. Har Kaur succeeded to the property of her father not as a limited but as a full owner and in this connection he placed reliance on the following observations of Abdul Rashid, J., in Arjan Singh v. Mt. Kirpa Devi, 1935 AIR(Lah) 920

(3.) The only other contention raised on behalf of the appellants was that they had reclaimed the land after the sale and before the institution of the suit and that the findings to the contrary arrived at by the Courts below were not correct. Those are concurrent findings of fact which have not been shown to be vitiated by any misapprehension or misinterpretation of evidence. Learned counsel for the appellants did contend that the Khasra Girdawaris, which form the chief basis of those findings, had been misread by the Courts below but he could not convince me that this was so. It does no doubt appear that quite some entries in the Khasra Girdawaris are conflicting but then those of them which favour the defendants cannot be taken at their face value unless it is shown that the others contrary thereto do not represent the truth. The defendants themselves rely in support of their plea of reclamation on the entries in the Khasra Girdawaris and if those entries are conflicting the safest course would be, in the absence of evidence as to which of them are correct, to reject the Khasra Girdawaris as unreliable pieces of evidence, which of course, leaves the defendants with scant material in support of their plea of reclamation. In this view of the matter, I am of the opinion that no fault can be found with the findings of the two Courts below in respect of that plea.