MODI, J. - (1.) THIS is a writ application by Thakur Bhanu Pratap Singh under Arts. 226 and 227 of the Constitution praying for the issue of a writ of certiorari or any other writ or direction in the nature thereof to quash the judgment and order of the Revenue Board dated the 17th March, 1961.
(2.) THE material facts are these. THE petitioner is the ex-Jagirdar of Thikana Dudu which was part of the former State of Jaipur. This Jagir was resumed on the 4th of February, 1956, under the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs Act, 1952 (Act No. IV of 1952, hereinafter referred to as the Act ). THE petitioner made an application for compensation in connection with the resumption of his Jagir to the Jagir Commissioner on the 17th April/1956. In the statement of claim then filed by him, he valued the gross income of Jagir at Rs. 68,447/0/6 as follows : - Income from Amount 1. Land Revenue 57,054/ 2/6 2. Forest 985/11/9 Grazing dues 5,439/15/0 Mines 141/ 0/0 Non-agricultural dues of land. . . 447/ 4/3 Sale of Abadi and culturable land 2,123/11/0 Salt compensation 260/ 5/0 Excise Compensation 1,494/15/0 Tribute from sub-grantees 500/ 0/0 68,447/ 0/6 It is not in dispute that the petitioner was allowed interim compensation under sec. 32 (1) of the Act on the gross income of Rs. 66,424/ -. On the 12. 6. 1957, the petitioner applied to the Jagir Commissioner for amendment of his statement of claim for compensation on the ground that certain items relating to income from non-agricultural uses of land in his Jagir had been omitted from the original claim. It was principally alleged by the petitioner in that connection that the compensation, claim had been filed by his Kamdar who did not have any proper conception of what heads of income were required to be included in the statement of claim according to law. This application was allowed by the Jagir Commissioner as a result of which the petitioner presented a revised claim on the 14th June, 1957 on the footing that his gross income was Rs. 95,641/6/- instead of Rs. 68,447/-/6 as originally stated. The petitioner produced his books of account in support of his revised claim. It appears that the Jagir Commissioner sent this claim for verification to the Deputy Collector Jagir, and had the petitioner's account-books audited departmentally, and thereafter the Jagir Commissioner also made a personal inspection of the area comprised in the petitioner's Jagir and prepared a note thereof, and eventually by his orders dated the 27th January, 1959 and 4th February, 1959, assessed the gross income of the petitioner's jagir at Rs. 73,942/63 np. Aggrieved by this decision, the petitioner as well as the State went up in appeal to the Revenue Board by two separate appeals Nos. 28 and 30 of 1959. The Revenue Board by its decision dated the 17th March, 1961, dismissed the petitioner's appeal and allowed the appeal of the State and held that the sum of Rs. 26,934/68 np. allowed by the Jagir Commissioner to the petitioner on account of the income of the non-agricultural uses of land shall be totally disallowed and further that out of the total income of Rs. 2024/90 np. allowed on account of the sale of Abadi and culturable land, a sum of Rs. 1174/- be deducted being the income from the so called sale of cultivable land and the balance of Rs. 850/90 np. only be allowed. The Board further directed that the gross income of the Jagirdar shall be calculated afresh in accordance with the modifications ordered by it and that the petitioner's claim for compensation be finalised thereafter on that footing. It is this order which is being attacked by the petitioner Bhanu Pratap Singh in the present writ application. 3. Pausing here for a moment, we should like to invite attention to certain correspondence which was exchanged between the Secretary to the Government in the Revenue Department and the Jagir Commissioner while the case for compensation was pending before the latter officer. By his confidential letter dated the 11th Jan. , 1958, the Revenue Secretary wrote to the Jagir Commissioner to the effect that it had been brought to the notice of the Government that the Jagirdar of Dudu had presented two claims before him one after another and that the revised claim differed materially from the one which was put in in the first instance, inasmuch as there was a difference of several thousands of rupees between the two claims. Then follows the important portion of the letter which we would reproduce in the very language used therein : - "the Government would like to know the circumstances under which the second claim was entertained and by whom and also the reasons explained by the Jagirdar for these discrepancies. Any application presented by the Jagirdar for the second claim before you may along with first one kindly be sent to me along with a factual report in the matter. " The stand taken by the Jagir Commissioner in his reply dated the 22nd February, 1958, was that there could be no objection to a revised claim being filed by the Jagirdar, but no payment of compensation would be permissible on the basis of the revised claim unless it was verified. The Jagir Commissioner further added that the claim had accordingly been forwarded to the Deputy Collector (Jagir) for verification in accordance with the rules. The Commissioner also maintained that there was no provision in the Act or the Rules framed thereunder which restricted the Jagir Commissioner, or, for that matter, any other officer empowered to decide compensation cases from accepting revised claims and that such claims were subject to scrutiny in the same way as the claim originally put in, and therefore, there would be no chance of any excess payment to be made to the claimant simply because he had filed a revised claim. The Revenue Secretary then sent a further letter to the Jagir Commissioner on the 25th January, 1958, wherein he wanted to know "whether the record produced by the Jagirdar at the time of verification of his previous claim was kept in safe custody as per provisions of law, or not. If yes, the details of the record may be given. " It has been strongly contended before us on behalf of the petitioner that the unusual interest shown by the State Government during the pendency of this inquiry before the Jagir Commissioner was bound to have a prejudicial effect on the decision of this case both when it was before the Jagir Commissioner and the Revenue Board and that this should be enough to quash the order complained against. We have felt not a little concerned about the kind of interest which was displayed by the State Government during the course of inquiry in this case. In our considered judgment, a proceeding for settlement of compensation before the Jagir Commissioner is a quasi judicial matter, and the expression of the kind of anxiety which was made by the executive during the pendency of the inquiry is something which we are by no means prepared to view with equanimity much less to encourage, as it is obviously likely to interfere with the even course of administration of justice, and to create a misgiving in the mind of the opposite party concerned that he will not have justice or fair-play at the hands of the tribunal. We cannot over-emphasize the observance of the salutary and well-settled principle in such matters that justice must not only be done but must manifestly seem to be done. While, therefore we discountenance the kind of procedure which was adopted by the executive in this case, we are glad to note, however, that so far as we are able to see, the correspondence in question did not have any effect prejudicial to the petitioner on the Jagir Commissioner, and all that it resulted in was that he employed extra care and circumspection to see that the petitioner's claim was thoroughly scrutinised. Reference may be made in this connection to his letter to the Deputy Collector, Jagir, Jaipur which is at page 71 of the Paper Book. In this view of the matter, we do not think that we will be justified in quashing the proceeding on this ground alone. 4. It may next be pointed but that this case seems to have been hotly contested before the Jagir Commissioner by a Mukhbir as well as by the legal adviser to the Jagir Commissioner. Strong pleas were raised before him to the effect that the revised claim preferred by the petitioner was a very belated one inasmuch as it was filed some fourteen months after the original claim was filed on the 17th April, 1956, that the account-books by which his claim was supported had also not been produced by the petitioner along with the presentation of the original claim and they had been produced after the revised claim was filed, that these books were altogether unreliable, and, therefore, they did not deserve any credence, and consequently the claim for compensation based on such material, in so far as it was revised by the petitioner, should be thrown out altogether. 5. We may point out here that the principal controversy which was raised before the Jagir Commissioner related to two items only (1) income from non-agricultural uses of land and (2) income from the sale of Abadi and cultural land. It will be seen that in the original claim filed by the petitioner the income from these two sources was respectively shown as Rs. 447/4/3 and Rs. 2123/11/ -. So far as the first item is Concerned, the income thereunder was then stated to have consisted of the sale of bones and unclaimed carcasses only. When the revised claim was put in, however, the income from non-agricultural uses of land was shown as Rs. 31,328/14/8, and the petitioner's case was that this income consisted of the proceeds from the sale of trees, grass, pala, Loong papri and fish, and it ofcourse included the income from the sale of bones and carcasses as before. So far as the income from the sale of cultural land is concerned, it is said to consist of the premiums charged by the Jagirdar for giving Khatedari rights in culturable lands. It may as well be pointed out at this place that so far as the income from the sale of bones is concerned, the Jagir Commissioner disallowed it, and there is no dispute about that before us. No serious dispute has also been raised before us so far as the income from the so-called sale of Khatedari rights in cultural lands amounting to Rs. 2093/3/1 is concerned, and, therefore, we shall say nothing more about it. 6. It will thus appear that the principal contention between the parties relates to the income from non-agricultural uses of land which was claimed by the Jagirdar at a figure of Rs. 31,328/14/8, being the annual average income for the three years preceding the basic year which was in this case 1956. A good deal of suspicion seems to have arisen in this case as regards the genuineness of this source of income because the figure was obviously a considerable one and the income from this source in earlier years was shown to be at the time of the revised claim for compensation. As we have already pointed out, a forceful objection was raised before the Jagir commissioner that this revised claim should not have been admitted at all and that the account books by which it was sought to be supported had been produced more than fourteen months after the original claim was instituted. It was also urged in this connection on behalf of the department that the books appeared to have been written by one man and at one time, and, therefore, the claim did not deserve to be granted. 7. These pleas, however, did not find favour with the Jagir Commissioner. He found that it was open to a claimant to file a revised claim if he thought that, that was called for and that such a claim if and when filed had to be subjected to a thorough scrutiny in the same way as the original claim and if on such scrutiny it was found to be tenable, no objection could be taken to the filing or the acceptance of the revised claim. He further found that in the present case, the accounts produced by the petitioner had been subjected to a departmental audit more than once and there was no reason to suppose that they were forged. The Jagir Commissioner was definitely of the opinion that the mere fact that the account-books were all written by one man who was an employee of the Thikana could not legitimately be objected to because the usual practice in the case of Jagirdars was to employ only one man for the purpose. He also observed that it was not correct that all the entries in the account-books had throughout been made by a single individual, as there were entries in the hand-writing of other persons presumably when the permanent man was away on leave or was otherwise not available. Further, the Jagir Commissioner seems to have been of the view that it was proved even from the statements of the witnesses (see the evidence of D. Ws. Ramchander, Ramnarain, Junta, Roopa, Suraj, Kopa and Bhura) produced on behalf of the department that some income did accrue to the Jagirdar (petitioner here) from the sale of trees, grass, Pala,loong Papri, fish, etc. on account of which compensation was being claimed by the petitioner and which claim had somehow been omitted from the original claim filed by him, due either to lack of the proper knowledge or legal awareness on the part of the Jagirdar or his Kamdar. He, therefore, evolved a certain formula into the details of which we consider it unnecessary to go for the purposes of deciding the present application and on that basis ordered that the gross income might be reduced proportionately and in this way he came to the conclusion that the petitioner was entitled to claim compensation on a gross revenue of Rs. 26933/63 np. as being income from non-agricultural uses of land instead of Rs. 31,328/14/8 claimed by him. The Jagir Commissioner also held that the petitioner had cut down certain trees alongside the road without obtaining the necessary permission from the Public Works Department, and, therefore, he was not entitled to have the income relating thereto computed in his claim. He thus came to the conclusion that the gross annual income of the Jagirdar on which he was entitled to have his claim for compensation assessed amounted to Rs. 73,942/63 np. only and awarded him compensation on that footing by his order dated the 4th February, 1959. 8. As we have already stated, both parties were dis-satisfied with this judgment and went in appeal to the Revenue Board. The Board dismissed the appeal of the petitioner and allowed the appeal of the State, and we may now briefly summarise the principal points made by the Board in its judgment. 9. The Board found that it was no use for the Jagirdar to say that the original claim had been presented by his Kamdar because it had been signed and verified by him, that that claim could only have been prepared on the basis of the account-books of the Jagirdar, that the interim compensation had also been claimed and given on the basis of the gross-income mentioned therein, and, therefore, the amended claim was, 'evidently a product of afterthought," and the very basis on which it was sought to be put forward stood demolished. The learned Members of the Board seem to have viewed with great disfavour the fact that the claim which was put forward later as 'revised' was not preferred in the very first instance, based as it was on the same account-books, and were inclined to think that the only rational explanation for such a claim was that it had been put forward with some ulterior motive. The learned Members further found that that being so, a heavy burden lay upon the petitioner to show how the first claim came to be made in the inaccurate manner in which it was, and that no satisfactory explanation was forthcoming in this behalf. As the learned Members put it, "in fact, the possibility of such an explanation ever coming to light was completely over ruled by the failure of the Jagirdar to examine the scribe of the account books or the person who prepared the claim. " Thereafter, they go on to severely criticise the late production of the account-books by the jagirdar and according to them a strong presumption arose that the record was "being detained deliberately to negative the claim and to support the subsequent one". Contrary to the finding of the Jagir Commissioner, the circumstance that the account-books appeared to have been written at one time and by one and the same man, seems to have weighed heavily with them. They also commented adversely on the non-production of the receipts in connection with the various items of income which accrued to the Jagirdar under the head of income from non-agricultural uses of land and held that the explanation offered by the Jagirdar that he kept at other places than his thikana headquarters, (namely Dudu) a small official who collected income throughout the year and deposited it at the end thereof at the headquarters of the thikana could not be accepted either from the view point of the thikana itself or from that of those who had occasions of entering into dealings with it, and that it was difficult to believe that such a system could have been prevalent without the imposition of any checks or counter-checks. The learned Members then seem to have entertained the view that sec. 34 of the Indian Evidence Act required that apart from the entries in the books of account regularly kept in the course of business, there must be independent corroborative evidence to charge any person with liability and that such evidence was more or less completely lacking in this case. Thereafter they proceeded to point out the disparity between the income stated by Jagirdar in his revised statement of claim and the income for some previous years under the various sub-heads of the major head in question and came to the conclusion that no satisfactory explanation was available for the "phenomenal upward trend in these figures", and, therefore, the position taken by the Jagirdar was untenable. This is how they summed up their decision towards the end of their judgment - "we, therefore, come to the conclusion that the Jagirdar failed to establish his claim in respect of the items under dispute and hence the Government appeal should succeed. " It seems to have been strongly urged before the Board as an alternative argument that even if it came to the conclusion to which it did, it could not be denied that from a jagir of the size with which we are concerned in this case (it consisted of eight villages and paid an annual tribute of about six thousand rupees to the State before it was resumed) the jagirdar must have derived some income from the non-agricultural uses of land comprising the jagir, and that if the case put forward by him was considered to be an unduly inflated one he might be awarded such compensation as the Board considered reasonable in the circumstances of the case. This argument was repelled by the learned Members of the Board in the following words : - "there may be some substance in this contention. But any decision based on this approach would not be judicial One and may amount to an arbitrary adjudication. The Jagirdar was bound to prove the claim put forth by him and on his failure to do so he will lose the claim in its entirety. An approach suggested on behalf of the jagirdar may be a basis for mutual adjustment between the parties but certainly not for the Board to base its judicial decision. " It was from this reasoning that the claim of the Jagirdar for compensation which had been accepted by the Jagir Commissioner at Rs. 26933/18 np. was entirely rejected, and the manner of this rejection is strongly assailed before us by learned counsel for the petitioner. The contention is that the entire approach of the Board to the matter before it was patently wrong and clearly amounted to a manifest error on the face of the record sufficient to attract our certiorari jurisdiction. Elaborating his argument, learned counsel pointed out that the mere fact that the jagirdar in this case thought fit to make or made a revised claim in the circumstances thereof need not have been viewed with so much of suspicion. It was admitted that the jagirdar had signed the statement of claim but it was submitted that it was prepared by his Kamdar, and that is how the statement was preferred, and whether it was prepared rightly would undoubtedly depend upon the competence of the person who made it, and that there was nothing necessarily sinister about it. It was forcefully argued before us that the Jagir Commissioner had devoted more than the usual care and circumspection to the decision of the present case inasmuch as he had the account-books of the petitioner audited, departmentally more than once by special audit parties and no serious fault had been found with these accounts. As for other patent and serious errors in the judgment of the Revenue Board, our attention was particularly invited to the view entertained by the learned Members of the Board in two respects - (1) that the petitioner must have produced the scribe of the account-books before there could be accepted as proper evidence and (2) that sec. 34 of the Evidence Act was applicable to the case and that before the State Government could be saddled with the responsibility of paying the quantum of compensation claimed by the petitioner, these account-books must have been proved to the hilt. Lastly, it was contended that in any view of the matter, the petitioner's claim for compensation on account of the income from non-agricultural uses of land in his jagir should not have been thrown out in a summary fashion when the learned Members themselves thought that there Was substance in the petitioner's contention that it could not possibly be denied that some income from sources like sale of grass, Pala, loong papri, and trees should in the normal course of things have been available to the petitioner with respect to his jagir lands, and that the view entertained by the learned members that any decision based on this approach would not be a judicial one but would amount to an arbitrary adjudication was entirely unwarranted. We have given these contentions our close and careful consideration and we come to the conclusion they have force. The first question that arises for consideration in this connection is what is the nature and character of an inquiry into a claim for compensation made under sec. 32 of the Act. But before we deal with that section, we wish to draw attention to sec. 26 of the Act which clearly lays down that, subject to the other provisions of this Act, the Government shall be liable to pay to every Jagirdar whose Jagir lands are resumed under sec. 21, such compensation as shall be determined in accordance with the principles laid down in the Second Schedule thereof and that compensation payable under this section shall be due as from the date of resumption. Sec. 31 then provides that every Jagirdar whose jagir land has been resumed shall, within two months from the date of the notification issued under sec. 21 file in the prescribed form, a statement of claim for compensation before the Jagir Commissioner. There is a proviso to this section which lays down that the Jagir Commissioner may entertain a statement submitted after the period prescribed in this section if he is satisfied that the Jagirdar was prevented by sufficient cause from submitting the statement within the prescribed time. It is further provided under this section that every statement of claim shall contain the particulars which have been specified under the nine clauses mentioned therein. The Second Schedule of the Act then defines the "basic year" and prescribes that the gross income of the Jagirdar for the basic year shall be the total income from his Jagir lands under the various heads mentioned thereunder and these include income from non-agricultural uses of land such as market fees, sale of fishing rights and the like but not including rents from houses on village sites among other sources of income. Then we come to sec. 32 which is very important for our purposes. This section reads as follows - "determination of compensation - (1) On receipt of a statement of claim under the last preceding section or if no such statement of claim is received within the period specified in that section, upon the expiry of that period the Jagir Commissioner shall, after making any such inquiry as he deems necessary by order in writing, provisionally determine - (a) the amount of compensation payable to the Jagirdar under Sec. 26; (b ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (c ). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (2) A copy of an order made under sub-sec. (1) shall be served upon the Government, the jagir-dars and every other interested person and the Jagir Commissioner, shall after giving the Government, the Jagirdar and any such interested person a reasonable opportunity of being heard in the matter, make a final order. " The only other provision to which we need refer in this connection, and to which our attention has been invited on behalf of the learned Deputy Government Advocate, is rule 45 of the Rules made under the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs Act, 1952, hereinafter referred to as the Rules. This rule reads as follows - "enquiries how to be conducted - All enquiries under the Act shall unless otherwise specifically provided therein, or in these rules, be conducted - (a) in contested cases, in the manner provided by law for the trial of a suit in a revenue court, (b) in other cases, in the manner provided by law for the trial of an application by a revenue court. " The question to consider in the light of these provisions is whether an inquiry under S. 32 of the Act should be conducted in the manner provided for the trial of a suit in a revenue court. It was strenuously contested by the learned Deputy Govt. Advocate that that should be so in all contested cases as the present case was. He also contended that the provisions of the Evidence Act were attracted to such an inquiry by virtue of see. 1 of the Evidence Act. Omitting the immaterial portion of this section, what it provides is that the Evidence Act shall apply to all judicial proceedings in or before any court. The question, therefore, is whether the Jagir Commissioner is a court within the meaning of sec. 1 of the Evidence Act. We have carefully considered this question and our answer is that he is not. In our jagir ment, the Jagir Commissioner is a persona designata, and in so far as he has been empowered by the Act to decide claims for compensation payable to a Jagirdar under the Act, he is required to act in a quasi-judicial manner. That being so, we do not think that either the Evidence Act or the Code of Civil Procedure applies to such proceedings before the Jagir Commissioner. We are confirmed in the conclusion to which we have come by the scheme of the Act. We have already set out in extenso sec. 32, and we have also referred to the preceding sec. 31. Sec. 31 requires that every Jagirdar whose jagir land has been resumed under sec. 21 shall within two months from the date of the notification, file a statement of claim for compensation before the Jagir Commissioner in the prescribed form and that statement shall further contain the various particulars mentioned in sub-sec. (2) of that section. It has also been laid down in sub-sec. (3) thereof that where a Jagirdar relies upon any documents as evidence in support of his statement of claim, he shall enter such documents in a list to be added or annexed to the statement of claim. Then follows sec. 32 and a plain reading of that section leaves no doubt in our minds that although the Legislature wants that a claimant jagirdar should file a statement of his claim for compensation as required by sec. 31, still his claim for compensation cannot be ruled out where no such statement of claim may have been filed. The reason to our mind is not far to seek. And that is that while enacting the Act with which we are concerned, the Legislature wanted as a measure of land reforms, the Jagirdari system must be abolished in State and that jagir lands must be resumed in order to ameliorate the condition of our peasantry, it was also anxious to see that the Jagirdars received their due and legitimate compensation for the resumption of their Jagirs. This requirement, to our mind, broadly speaking, stems from Art. 31 of the Constitution. That Article inter alia lays down that no property shall be compulsorily acquired or requisitioned save for a public purpose and except by authority of law which must provide for compensation for the property so acquired or requisitioned. It is further enacted therein that the law may itself fix the amount of compensation or may rest content with specifying the principles on which and the manner in which the compensation is to be determined and given and no law shall be called in question in any court on the ground that the compensation provided by that law is not adequate. But the important point to bear in mind is that compensation has got to be determined and given for the lands resumed. It seems to us that it is in pursuance of this constitutional requirement that sec. 32 of the Act provides for the determination of compensation payable to a Jagirdar for the resumption of his jagir, even in those cases where he may not have filed the statement of claim for such compensation. We have no hesitation in saying that a procedure like this hardly conforms to the basic requirements of the Code of Civil Procedure or the Land Revenue Act in so far as the trial of a civil or a revenue suit is concerned. We should also like to emphasise in this connection that there is no provision in this Act which makes the provisions of the Evidence Act applicable to the matter of determination of the claim for compensation.
(3.) WHAT then is the kind of enquiry which the Jagir Commissioner has to make under the Act in order to determine the matter of compensation ? Sec. 32 provides the answer. It says that the Commissioner shall make "such enquiry as he deems necessary" before awarding compensation. The point which specially requires to be noted in this connection is that sec. 32 does not merely say "after enquiry" or "after making an enquiry" but it says "after making such enquiry as he deems necessary". The last-mentioned expression is by no means rigid and is quite flexible, and, therefore, the Jagir Commissioner has been given a discretion to embark upon an enquiry which may suit the requirements of a case before him and it would be going too far to hold that such an inquiry has to be made in accordance with the requirements of the Civil Procedure Code or the Evidence Act. We are quite alive to sub-sec. (3) of sec. 31 to which we have drawn attention above which provides that where a Jagirdar relies upon any documents whether in his possession or power or not as evidence in support of the statement of claim, he shall enter such documents in a list to be added or annexed to his statement of claim. There was no provision in the Act at the time with which we are concerned and when the present petitioner preferred his claim for compensation, which prescribes the time for the "production" of such documents or the stage at which they ought to be produced. Our attention has been drawn in this connection to sec. 22-A of the Act which among other things lays down that - "every jagirdar whose jagir lands have been or are resumed under this Act shall, within two months of the date of the commencement of the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs (11th Amendment) Act, 1959, or of the date of resumption of his jagir lands, whichever may be latter, deliver to the Collector, or to any officer authorised in this behalf by the Collector, after obtaining a duly signed receipt from him for the same, all records relating to the administration and management of his jagir lands so resumed or pertaining to the various items of receipts and disbursements mentioned in cls. 2 and 4 respectively of the Second Schedule to this Act, which, in respect of such jagir lands, such jagirdar may have maintained or caused to be maintained or which may then be in his possession or power. " But it is enough to point out that this provision did not exist in 1956, and, therefore, can have no bearing on the decision of the question before us. We have, therefore, no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that sec. 31 (3) is a directory provision and no more. It is in this setting that the question falls for consideration whether the learned Members of the Board of Rev. were justified in law in entertaining the opinion that the petitioner must have produced the scribe and that on account of his failure to do so, an adverse presumption must be drawn against him that if he had appeared, the evidence given by him must have gone against the Jagirdar, or the further question that the provisions of sec. 34 of the Evidence Act were properly attracted into application in the present case. Our answer to these questions is in the negative. We may also add that R. 45 of the Rules has no application to inquiries under sec. 32, because that rule, on its plain language, is called into operation only where no specific provision relating to an enquiry has been made elsewhere. As we have analysed sec. 32 above, this section clearly prescribes that the inquiry to be made by the Jagir Commissioner would be such as he deems necessary in the circumstances of a particular case before him. It is contended before us on behalf of the petitioner that that is a provision which is specific enough, and we think that that submission is correct. As a contrast to the provision relating to an inquiry made under sec. 32, we may invite attention to sec. 7 (3) or sec. 38 of the Act which contemplate an enquiry in the matters dealt with under those sections "in the prescribed manner". There was nothing to prevent the Legislature from using the same phraseology in sec. 32 if its contemplation was that the enquiry under that Section should beheld in the manner provided in R. 45. Having regard, therefore, to the analysis we have made of the object underlying the Act and of the provisions contained in secs. 25, 31 and 32 thereof, we are definitely disposed to hold the view that it cannot be held as a matter of law that the inquiry which the Jagir Commissioner is required to make as regards the determination of payment of compensation to an expropriated Jagirdar must be in the manner provided for the trial of a civil or a revenue suit or that the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act can be held to be applicable thereto. The Legislature has left the form of the enquiry to the discretion of the Jagir Commissioner as provided in sec. 32. He is, therefore, free to mould the enquiry to suit the exigencies of the particular case before with him. But as in the case of every enquiry before a tribunal dealing with quasi judicial matters, what is necessary is that the enquiry must conform of the broad requirements of justice, equity and good conscience. It must thus follow that the view of the learned Members of the Revenue Board that sec. 34 of the Evidence Act was attracted into application in this case or that a presumption under sec. 114 of the Evidence Act also came into operation on account of the non-production by the petitioner of the scribe of the account-books, cannot be held as tenable, and we are further of the opinion that in holding to the contrary, the learned Members fell into a manifest error. We hold accordingly. We are also inclined to think that, in addition to this error, the Board fell into a further error of jurisdiction. That occurred when the Board entertained the view that even though there was some substance in the petitioner's contention that he did derive income from the various uses of non-agricultural land, with respect to his Jagir named by him, such a claim could not be considered or adjudicated upon because he had failed to prove his claim in entirety as put forward on the basis of his account-books. Having regard to the scheme underlying the Act or the principles enshrined under sec. 32 thereof, this view with all respect appears to us to be unduly narrow. As we have already pointed out, the normal procedure for the claimant jagirdar is to file a statement of his claim for compensation under sec. 31, and we should be very loath to be understood to say that such a requirement which is indeed salutary should not be observed. To say that, however, is one thing. But it would be an entirely different proposition to hold from this that a jagirdar cannot be held entitled to compensation for the various incomes from his Jagir land because he has somehow failed to file a statement of his claim, or further that he can be-legitimately deprived of his compensation in connection with certain sources of income which were put forward by him in a revised statement of claim although they were not so included in his original claim. In either of these two cases, namely, where no statement of claim may have been put in at all or where a revised claim including certain additional sources of income has been introduced later, a duty has been laid by the Act on the Jagir Commissioner to determine the amount of compensation payable to a Jagirdar under sec. 32 and in that connection it would be his further duty to make such enquiry as may be required for the purpose. In this state of the law, we find it impossible for us to hold that the claim of an expropriated Jagirdar can be thrown out on the ground that he has failed to prove his claim in entirety and on a part of the material on which he wanted to base his claim. It may Well be that one support of the claimant's case may fall altogether, yet he would be entitled to an alternative support if such is available to him in the circumstances of the case, and such support would undoubtedly come to the assistance of the petitioner in the present case for the simple reason that it is impossible to accept, as indeed the learned Members themselves were not prepared to do, that a Jagirdar of the size of the present petitioner did not derive any income whatsoever from the sale of trees or pala or grass or the like. In these circumstances we are delicately of the view that the learned Members of the Board failed to exercise the jurisdiction which in law was vested in them, namely, to make or order such further enquiry in the matter of compensation with respect to the head of income in issue. And that again clearly attracts our certiorari jurisdiction. We may add here that it is not for us to determine what precise kind of inquiry the authorities concerned should make in a matter of this kind, or further that which part of the material produced by either of the contending parties deserves credence or not. All these are matters which must be left to the judgment of those concerned. ;