BAPNA, J. - (1.) THIS is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
(2.) ACCORDING to the allegations made by the petitioner Niranjan Lal, one Rao Hiralal was a Muafidar of village Bidarka, Tehsil Lalsot, District Jaipur. He died in the year 1944 and the petitioner Niranjan Lal applied for Matmi (recognition as successor of a State-grantee) in his favour on the ground that he had been adopted by Rao Hiralal during his life time. Govind Narain opposed the application, and claimed Matmi for himself as being the nearest collateral of the deceased. The Deputy Commissioner was of opinion that Matmi should be sanctioned in the name of Niranjan Lal, and submitted his recommendation to the then Board of Revenue of the Jaipur state. The Board of Revenue of the Former Jaipur State referred the matter to the Cabinet, meaning thereby the Government of Jaipur, for guidance in respect of sub-rule (2) of Rule 14 of the Jaipur Matmi Rules, 1945. On the integration of the Jaipur State so as to form the United State of Rajasthan, the Revenue Secretary sent the case to the Rajasthan Board of Revenue for deciding the case according to its best light. The Board of Revenue decided that as the adoption of Niranjan Lal had been made by Rao Hira Lal without obtaining the previous sanction of the Government, it could not be recognised under sub-rule (2) of Rule 14 of the Matmi Rules, and that even before the Rules were framed it was necessary to take sanction of the Government according to the practice and usage of that period. The Revenue Board by its order dated 14th July, 1951, purported to sanction the Matmi in the name of Govind Narain. The petitioner filed an appeal to the Revenue Minister, who decided on 26/27th June, 1952, that the order of the Board of Revenue was final, and no appeal lay to the Government. The petitioner filed a review, but it was dismissed on 17th November, 1952, whereafter the present petition was filed in this Court. It was contended that the Board of Revenue, Rajasthan, had exceeded the powers conferred upon it by rule 26 of the Jaipur Matmi Rules, and all that the Board of Revenue could do was to make a recommendation to the Government for passing of a final order. It was also contended that the Board of Revenue had committed an obvious error by applying rule 14(2) of the Matmi Rules retrospectively to an adoption which had been made prior to the enforcement of the Jaipur Matmi Rules. It was, therefore, prayed that the orders of the Board of Revenue dated 14th July, 1951, sanctioning the Matmi in favour of Govind Narain be set aside, and further appropriate directions be given in the matter. Rule 26 of the Jaipur Matmi Rules declared the powers of the various authorities in the matter of sanction of Matmi to be as set forth in Appendix D. The Revenue Minister or a Bench of the Revenue Board consisting of two members were authorised (according to the Appendix) to sanction Matmi in all cases, provided that (a) the last Matmidar was not a Tazimi Sardar; (b) there was no dispute; (c) the grant was reported by the Dewani Huzuri office not to have been made during minority; (d) the applicant was in the line of the original grantee otherwise than through adoption. In the present case, the petitioner Niranjan Lal was claiming Matmi by adoption, and further a dispute had arisen between him and Govind Narain. It is, therefore, clear that the Jaipur Board of Revenue had not the power to sanction Matmi under its own authority. Rule 27 provided for such cases to be referred to Council, meaning thereby that only the Government was authorised to pass final orders in such cases. After integration the power was conferred exclusively on the Rajpramukh by Art.VII (3) of the Covenant to recognise a successor. The Board of Revenue, Rajasthan was, therefore, not competent to sanction the Matmi in this case. Learned counsel for the respondent agreed that the Board of Revenue was not authorised in this case to sanction Matmi under its own authority, but contended that the matter had subsequently been referred to His Highness the Rajpramukh, and His Highness the Rajpramukh had) recognised Govind Narain as successor of Hiralal by virtue of the power conferred upon him by Art. VII (3) of the Covenant and as the recognition of a successor to Jagir was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Rajpramukh, the present petition could not succeed. The respondent produced the letter of the Revenue Secretary to the Commissioner, Jaipur, dated 6th September, 1954, intimating as follows: - "I am directed to convey formal sanction of H.H. the Raj Pramukh to the Matmi in the name of Shri Govind Narain in respect of the muafi grants last held by Shri Heera Lal deceased in village Bidarka, Surampura, Naila and Nangal." Learned counsel for the respondent relied upon a recent decision of the Supreme Court in Maharaja Umrao Singh Vs. Shri Bhagwati Singh (Civil Appeal No. 125 of 1952 decided on nth October, 1954) in support of his contention. It may be mentioned that the present petition was filed on 2nd December, 1952, and the sanction of His Highness the Rajpramukh, as is apparent from the letter of the Revenue Secretary, was obtained on the 6th September, 1954. Learned counsel for the appellant in reply to the plea taken by the respondent that his succession had been recognised by the Rajpramukh of Rajasthan urged that Art. VII (3) of the Covenant only empowered the Rajpramukh to recognise succession in the case of Jagirs, but as the grant, which was now the subject of dispute, was muafi, that provision of the Covenant was not applicable. A further question was raised whether the exercise of the power by the Rajpramukh to recognise succession to Jagirs conferred upon him by Art. VII could be continued to be exercised after the coming into force of the Constitution. As to the first contention, the word "Jagir" is not defined in the Covenant, and we are of opinion that the word "Jagir" as used in Article VII should be broadly interpreted to mean every kind of grant made or recognised as such by the rulers of the Covenanting States. In the Covenanting States, State-grants were enjoyed by different persons under different terms and conditions, and in order to distinguish the incidents of one from the other, each kind of grant was differently named. In Sec. 4 of the Jaipur Matmi Rules, " State-grant " is defined as "a grant of an interest in land made or recognised by the Ruler of the Jaipur State and includes a jagir, muamla, suba, istimrar, chakoti, badh, bhom, inam tankha, udak, milak aloofa, khangi, bhog or other charitable or religious grant, a site granted free of premium for a residence of a garden, or other grant of a similar nature." Similarly State-grants having different terms and conditions were given different names in other Covenanting States. The word "jagir" has come from middle ages, and according to Wilson's Glossary, "jagir" was a tenure common under the Mohammadan Government, in which the public revenues of given tract of land were made over to a servant of the State together with the powers requisite to enable him to collect and appropriate such revenue, and administer the general government of the district. The assignment was either conditional or unconditional; in the former case, some public service, as the levy and maintenance of troops or other specified duty was engaged for. In our opinion, the word "jagir" as used in Article VII (3) of the Covenant was used in a generic sense so as to cover all grants, for it could not have been the intention of the framers of Covenant that different grantees were to be treated in a different manner simply because they came to be designated by different names. The first contention, therefore, has no force. The second contention is that the power conferred on the Rajpramukh by Art. VII (3) of the Covenant can no longer be exercised after the coming into force of the Constitution. The identical question has been considered by a Full Bench of this Court in Th. Bahadur Singh Vs. H.H. the Rajpramukh of Rajasthan and others (F.B. C. Writ Petition No. 713 of 1952), to which both of us were a party. For the reasons given there we are of the opinion that powers under Art. VII (3) of the Covenant can no longer be exercised by the Rajpramukh after the coming into force of the Constitution on 26th January, I950, as the Covenant was a sort of interim constitutional arrangement which came to an end on the coming into force of the Constitution. The decision of the Supreme Court in Maharaja Umrao Singh Vs. Bhagwati Singh, cited above, is distinguishable, inasmuch as the recognition of Maharaja Bhagwati Singh as successor to the late Maharaja Sumer Singhji of Indergarh was made by the Rajpramukh of Rajasthan on the 1st of December, 1949, that is prior to the enforcement of the Constitution, and in the exercise of power as a sovereign. All vestiges of sovereignty of the Indian Rulers however disappeared on the coming into force of the Constitution on 26th January, 1950. The observation of Bose J. in delivering the judgment of the Supreme Court in Virendra Singh Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh(1) are very pertinent: - "Every vestige of sovereignty was abandoned by the Dominion of India and by the States and surrendered to the peoples of the land who through their representatives in the Constituent Assembly hammered out for themselves a new Constitution in which all were citizens in a new order having but one tie, and owing but one allegiance: devotion loyalty, fidelity, to the Sovereign Democratic Republic that is India. At one stroke all other territorial allegiances were wiped out and the past was obliterated except where expressly preserved; at one moment of time the new order was born with its new allegiance springing from the same source for all, grounded on the same basis: the sovereign will of the peoples of India with no class, no caste, no race, no creed, no distinction, no reservation." The next question that arises in that if the provisions of Art. VII (3) have ceased to be operative what would be the law or procedure which would govern disputes relating to succession to jagirs. The present case comes from the area of the former Jaipur State, and the position is examined with reference to the laws governing jagirs in that area. The Jaipur State Matmi Rules provided the procedure and the authority for decision of the disputes. As mentioned earlier, rule 26 read with Appendix D authorised certain officers and the Revenue Board to sanction Matmi in certain cases. Rule 27(8) provided by implication for a reference to the Government for orders in cases which the Revenue Board was not competent to dispose of in accordance with the powers conferred upon it by Appendix D. But this provision of the Matmi Rules was repealed by implication by vesting the jurisdiction exclusively in the Rajpramukh to recognise succession to jagirs under Art. VII, Clause (3), of the Covenant. That provision remained in operation from the date of the formation of Rajasthan till the commencement of the Constitution, when, as discussed above, that provision ceased to be operative. The repeal of Art. VII (3) of the Covenant by the Constitution did not, however, revive the previous provisions of the Matmi Rules. The general principle is that the repeal of a law repealing another law does not revive the earlier repealed law, and an illustration of this principle is to be found in sec. 7 of the General Clauses Act. After the commencement of the Constitution, therefore, no special forum for adjudication on a claim to succeed to a jagir remained in existence. Whatever may be the conditions of State-grants in other States, the Matmi Rules recognised the right of an heir to succeed to a State-grant although the determination of the heir depended upon certain relationship and o:her factors mentioned in the Rules. The jagirs were hereditary except in certain cases and the principle of the decision in Maharaja Umrao Singh Vs. Shri Bhagwati Singh which was a case on a special plea that the succession to the jagir then in dispute was determinable by the Ruler of Kotah in his capacity as a sovereign did not apply in this case. The claim to succeed to a jagir is a civil right and in the absence of any express or implied bar, a civil court of competent jurisdiction is empowered to adjudicate upon the claim under sec. 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure. As a result, the decision of the Board of Revenue dated 14th January, 1951, sanctioning Matmi in the name of Govind Narain is set aside, as being without jurisdiction, and for the reasons mentioned in the judgment the sanction of the Rajpramukh conveyed by the letter of the Revenue Secretary dated 6th September, 1954, is of no effect. The parties will bear their own costs in view of the peculiar circumstances of this case. ;