Amar Dutt, J. - (1.) The petitioners land -owners of village Salempur have filed this writ petition for issuance of a writ of certiorari quashing the order Annexure P.3 an order passed by the Collector, Fatehgarh Sahib rejecting their application for declaring them to be owners of the land in dispute and a mandamus directing the respondent No. 2 to transfer back the possession of the land as Mushtaraku Malkan to the land owners of the village.
(2.) According to the petitioners in the proceedings for consolidation of holdings in village Salempur out of the entire land put into the hotch -potch after repartition same was shown as 'Bachai' land which according to the Scheme of partition was reserved by the owners for the common purposes of the village. The petitioners claim that this land could not be treated as 'Shamlal deb' and had to be repartitioned amongst the proprietors according to their shares. They further submitted that the application for partition of the land had wrongly been dismissed.
(3.) The short point which arises in this case for consideration is whether the ownership of the land shown as 'Mushtaraka Malkan' and under the management and control of the Gram Panchayat in view of Sec. 23 -A of the Eat Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as the Act) vesis in the same and if not whether the right -holders would be entitled to have it repartitioned and the possession handed over to them.;