Dulat, J. - (1.) THIS is an appeal under clause 10 of the Letters Patent against a judgment of Grover, J., who, on second appeal, reversed a decree granted to the appellants by the Additional District Judge, Patiala. The learned Additional District Judge had granted the decree on appeal from the judgment of a Subordinate Judge, and the main ground taken in support of the present appeal is that the learned Single Judge has reversed a finding of fact reached by the learned Additional District Judge which this Court, was not entitled to do.
(2.) THE relevant facts are these. The respondent, Mahant Matindu Parkash, is the manager of a dera which was the owner of 76 bighas and 1 biswa of land in village Paharipur. Proceedings for consolidation of land holdings started in the village and at that time Mahant Matindu Parkash claimed that, apart from being the owner of 76 bighas and 1 biswa of land, he also had a proportionate share in the village shamlat. This claim was resisted by the village proprietors but the consolidation authorities held on the basis of certain, entries in the pedigree -table of the village that the Mahant was entitled to a corresponding share in the shamlat and proceeded accordingly. This led to the present litigation, being a suit by the village proprietors -Bachan Singh and others -who claimed a declaration that the Mahant was merely a Malik Qabza without any share in the shamlat and was not entitled to any such share and consequently claimed that out of the total area of 195 bighas 14 biswas allotted to the Mahant during consolidation proceedings the plaintiffs alone were entitled to 119 bighas and 13 biswas, this being the share corresponding to the share in the shamlat. The basis of the dispute was this. The predecessors of the present Mahant had originally owned only 13 bighas and 15 biswas of land but some time later and many years before the present suit one of the proprietors named Fatta had sold to the then Mahant an area of 62 bighas 7 biswas of land. The plaintiffs claimed that this sale was without a corresponding share in the shamlat while the Mahant claimed that the sale was along with a share in the shamlat. Both parties relied on entries in the revenue papers, as oral evidence regarding the nature of the transaction was, of course, not available. It appeared from the revenue papers that while in the pedigree -table prepared at the time of the first regular settlement of 1963 -64 Bk. there was a note to the effect that this area of 62 bighas 7 biswas had been sold along with a share in the shamlat, the Misal Haqiat prepared during the same regular settlement showed that the vendee Mahant was not the owner of a corresponding share in the shamlat but merely a Malik Qabza which entries had been repeated in the subsequent Jamabandis. The trial Court relied on the note in the pedigree -table and, like the consolidation authorities, held that the sale was with a share in the shamlat and the plaintiffs' claim was thus negatived and their suit dismissed On appeal, however , the learned Additional District Judge, after considering the evidence of these entries, found that the entries in the Misal Haqiat were more reliable and he preferred those entries to the note in the pedigree -table and held that no share in the shamlat had been sold at the time of the sale transaction and, therefore, concluded that the Mahant was not entitled to any share in the shamlat and consequently had no share whatever in 119 bighas and 13 biswas of land allotted to the Mahant on consolidation. Since, however only 5 of the six proprietors had appealed, the learned Additional District Judge granted the plaintiffs -appellants a declaration only as regards 5/6th share in the disputed area of land. Against that decree Mahant Matindu Parkash brought a second appeal to this Court and the whole matter was again argued before Grover, J., The learned Judge, although conscious of the fact that the conclusion of the learned Additional District Judge was prima facie a conclusion of fact, found that the conclusion was not correct and it was liable to be disturbed because the learned Additional District Judge had approached the question of fact from a wrong angle. The learned Single Judge then considered the evidence and found that the entries in the pedigree -table was more reliable than the entries in the Misal Haqiat, and he therefore allowed the appeal and set aside the decree of the learned Additional District Judge and restored the decree of the first Court, leaving the parties to their own costs. As I have said, the main argument in support of the present appeal is that the learned Single Judge was not entitled to reverse the finding of fact arrived at by the learned Additional District Judge after a consideration of the entire material before him, and Mr. Kaushal urges that it can make no difference to the submission whether the evidence was orally given by living witnesses or consisted of entries in the revenue papers, as the power of weighing the evidence rested with the learned Additional District Judge as the final Court of fact, and, if he preferred one piece of documentary evidence to another, he cannot be said to have committed any illegality. This submission has substance It is quite clear that there is no dispute about the interpretation of any written document or the revenue entries because all the entries are plain and their meaning is not in doubt. The note under the pedigree -table says quite clearly that 62 bighas 7 biswas of land was sold along with a share in the shamlat to Mahant Gobind Dass, and there is a similar entry under the name of the vendor Fatta stating that he had sold the land along with a share in the shamlat. It is obvious that if this statement is reliable, the conclusion must be that a share in the shamlat was also sold. The other piece of evidence is the statement in the Misal Haqiat prepared during the same regular settlement and that shows that Mahant Gobind Dass was only a Malik Qabza and no share in the shamlat had been sold to him. These entries are repeated in the subsequent year, and the Jamabandis show that the name of Gobind Dass and his successors as owners was entered after the shamlat khata, again indicating that these Mahants had no share in the shamlat of the village. Once again these entries are unambiguous. The only question in the present case is which entry should be preferred, or, in other words, which is more dependable. I do not think the function of judging between these two conflicting entries is in its nature different in any sense from the function of judging between two witnesses deposing to two contradictory facts. When, therefore, the learned Additional District Judge decided to hold that the entries in the Misal Haqiat were more reliable, he was merely weighing evidence and judging the credibility of one piece of evidence as against another. Such a conclusion is plainly a conclusion of fact, and as far as I can see it was not open to question on second appeal. The learned Single Judge found, and that was the ground on which he interfered, that the learned Additional District Judge had approached the question from a wrong angle, and in this connection he referred to the fact that the learned Additional District Judge had thought that an entry in a pedigree -table relating to acquisition of land does not carry any presumption of truth, which view the learned Single Judge thought erroneous in law. Mr. Kaushal for the appellants points out that although the learned Additional District Judge did make this observation regarding the presumption of truth attaching or not attaching to an entry in a pedigree -table of this kind, his ultimate conclusion did not depend on that view and the judgment of the learned Additional District Judge supports this submission. What the learned Additional District Judge said was this - As held in the authorities referred to above, a pedigree -table is mainly concerned to show the relationship of the parties and presumption of truth would attach to it only in that behalf. Even if this argument of learned counsel for the appellant is not taken into consideration, the fact remains that there is an omission of an entry in the Misal Haqiat that the defendant -Dera was having any share in the shamlat deh. This omission cannot be satisfactorily explained from the respondents' aside. So far as the devolution of property is concerned, the real record which is to matter is the Misal Haqiat. It seems to me therefore that in the final result the learned Additional District Judge, apart from any question of presumption, put the two pieces of evidence together one against the other, and he concluded that the Misal Haqiat entries were more reliable implying that the note in the pedigree -table was due to some misunderstanding or inadvertence as was the case of the present appellants. On this view of the matter it does not seem to me that the learned Additional District Judge had come to the conclusion of fact on the basis of any erroneous view of law. Nor did he feel that he was bound in any manner to prefer the Misal Haqiat entries to the entry in the pedigree -table. All that happened was that on a consideration of all the circumstances he was persuaded that as a matter of fact the Misal Haqiat entries were more dependable and I do not think his conclusion could be assailed on second appeal.
(3.) REFERENCE was made in the course of arguments to some other entries also, such as an entry in an earlier summary settlement of 1917 Bk. and also to an entry in a subsequent Jamabandi relating to the year 2003 Bk., but those entries were also considered by the learned Additional District Judge, and it is not suggested that in arriving at his conclusion he had overlooked any material evidence although, of course, he was so much impressed by the entries in the Misal Haqiat that he preferred to depend on those entries , alone. It may be that had the question of fact been open We may have on the evidence come to a conclusion similar to the one reached by the earned Single Judge but that does not mean that this Court can on second appeal reverse a finding of fact just because, in this Court's opinion the final Court of fact should not have believed the evidence which it did believe. The dispute in the present case is about a simple fact and that fact having been found against the present respondent by the Court of first appeal, it is not, in my opinion, open to this Court to come to a different conclusion. I would, in the result, allow this appeal, set aside the decree made by the learned Single Judge and restore that of the learned Additional District Judge but considering all the circumstances leave the parties to their own costs throughout. P.C. Pandit, J.;