- (1.) SHRI H. D. Ujjwal Mst. Madudi applied to the Assistant Collector Merta for reinstatement under sec. 7 of the Rajasthan (Protection of Tenants) Ordinance, No. IX of 1949. The Assistant Collector rejected the application on the ground that the opposite party were also tenants and where a tenant ejects or dispossess another tenant the Ordinance does not apply. He held that the preamble of the Ordinance clearly showed that this Ordinance was enacted to check the growing tendency of the land holders to eject their cultivators and further it was laid down in sec. 7 (2) of the Ordinance that notice of such application shall be given to the land holder. He, therefore, held that the ordinance was applicable only in cases where ejectment or dispossession has been caused by land holders.
(2.) AGAINST the above order this application has been filed by Mst. Madudi under sec. 10 (2) of the Ordinance. It is urged that the view -taken by the Assistant Collector of the scope of the Ordinance was wrong. This Ordinance was meant to give protection to tenants not only against land holders but also against trespassers. The preamble to the Ordinance runs as follows : - "whereas with a view to putting a check on the growing tendency of land holders to eject or dispossess tenants from their holding and in the wider national interest of increasing the production of food-grains it is expedient to make provisions for the protection of tenants in Rajasthan from ejectment or dispossession from their holdings". The concluding portion of the preamble clearly shows that the object of the Ordinance was to give protection to tenants from ejectment and dispossession from their holdings. Growing tendency of landholders to eject or dispossess tenants was only one of the reasons for enacting the Ordinance. The preamble also lays down the other reason of increasing the production of food-grains in the wider national interest by giving security of tenure to the tenants. The preamble does not thus restrict the scope of the Ordinance to ejectment of tenants by land holders alone. If this interpretation is put upon the Ordinance the land holders can always put other persons to dispossess the tenants and defeat the purpose of the Ordinance. Sec. 7 which provides for reinstatement of tenants lays down that any tenant who was in occupation of his holding on the first day of April 1948 and has thereafter been ejected there from or dispossessed thereof or from any part thereof can apply to the S. D. O. for his reinstatement on such holding or part as the case may be. Thus this section which is the main section for reinstatement of tenants does not restrict its operation to tenants who may have been dispossessed or ejected by the landholders but applies in all cases where a tenant has been ejected or dispossessed from his hodling. The Board has always taken this view of the scope of the Ordinance and the Assistant collector Merta was clearly wrong in holding the view that the Ordinance only applies where the tenant was ejected or dispossessed by a landlord. I would, therefore, subject to concurrence of my learned colleague accept the revision application and remand the case to the Assistant Collector Merta for being disposed of on merits. Shri K. S. Ranawat (23. 10. 1951) - 1 concur. .;