- (1.) Brij Bhan was a big land owner of some ancestral land and some part of his land was put in surplus pool. The land declared surplus of big land owner, Brij Bhan, was mutated in favour of the State of Haryana. As per the petitioners, this was wrongly done. The petitioners alongwith one Ram Bhaj, predecessor of respondent Nos.6 to 11 filed a petition under Section 8 of the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1971 (for short, "the Haryana Act") for exemption of land measuring 16 kanals comprised in Rectangle and Killa No.28/3-4, situated in the revenue estate of Village Kutana, Tehsil and District Rohtak from the surplus pool. The claim made in this application was that Harphool, father of the petitioners and Mehar Chand son of Bhundu purchased the abovesaid land vide registered sale deed dated 6.6.1956 in the ratio of 3/4 th share and 1/2 share respectively from Sh.Brij Bhan son of Shish Ram and Subh Ram son of Ranjit Singh in the ratio of 2/3 rd share and 1/3 rd share respectively. The mutation of the same was sanctioned on 21.9.1956. Mehar Chand sold his 1/4 th share to Harphool vide registered sale deed dated 20.3.1962 and the mutation of this was also sanctioned.
(2.) Harphool, father of the petitioners, became absolute owner of the abovesaid land.
(3.) After the death of Harphool, the petitioners and Sh.Ram Bhaj, heirs and successors inherited the property of Harphool and, thus, became owner in possession of the land in equal share i.e. 1/3 rd each. A mutation in this regard was sanctioned on 14.11.1987. In view of Section 8 of the Haryana Act, the land sold by big land owner before 30.7.1958 would be exempted from the surplus pool and the vendee being to be absolute owner of the land, claiming that the aforesaid land was sold on 6.6.1956 and so it would be exempted from the surplus pool and so could not be utilized under the scheme framed under the Haryana Act. The application filed by the petitioners, however, was rejected by S.D.O (Civil) (respondent No.5) vide his order dated 29.4.1999. Aggrieved against this, the petitioners approached the Collector, who accepted the appeal, vide order Annexure P-2. The State thereafter filed an appeal against the order passed by the Collector and the Commissioner had accepted the same on 26.4.2002. The revision filed by the petitioners has been rejected by the Financial Commissioner on 22.5.2003.;