A. Roy, J. - (1.) This Rule issued upon an application under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure made by the Petitioners whose application for preemption under Section 8 of the West Bengal Land Reforms Act was rejected by the Revenue Officer and also by the learned Munsif to whom an appeal had been preferred. Petitioners claimed to preempt a transfer which purported to have been made by a document executed in the form of a gift. Petitioners contended that the transaction was one of sale for consideration and form but the document was purposefully made out as a deed of gift. The property that was the subject-matter of the transfer which was sought to be preempted is the two-third share of a plot No. 422 in the khatian No. 1227/1 of mouza Amnan. In the R.S. records that plot has been described as a tank.
(2.) The transfer was made by the opposite party No. 4 in favour of the opposite parties Nos. 1 to 3 by the document which is dated August 17, 1965.
(3.) Both the transferor and the transferee, i.e. the opposite party No. 4 and the opposite parties Nos. 1 to 3 opposed. Before the Revenue Officer the ground of objection was that as the transfer was by gift there can be no preemption under Section 8 of the Land Reforms Act. The learned Revenue Officer noted that practically no other point of objection was raised before him. Regarding the objection the Revenue Officer held that in another case, i.e. Misc. Case No. 66 of 1965 the Second Court of the Munsif held the document to be a deed of gift and that was upheld in Misc. Appeal No. 19 of 1966 in the Court of the Subordinate Judge. It was brought to the notice of the Revenue Officer that the judgment in Misc. Appeal No. 19 of 1966 had been moved against in the High Court by an application under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The Revenue Officer, however, duly on the ground that the transfer was by a document which was in its form a deed of gift, held obviously because of the provision of Clause (b) of Sub-section (2) of Section 8 of the Land Reforms Act, that the application for preemption must fail and he disallowed the claim to preempt.;