1968 SCMR 143 (PLP)

MUHAMMAD YAQUB ALI, J.-The petitioner, a local, is in possession of the ground floor of a house in Lyallpur while the Upper floor is in the possession of a claimant displaced person. The Deputy Settlement Commissioner treated the house as indivisible and transferred it to the respondent, but on appeal Lt.-Col. Khushi Muhammad, Additional Settlement Commissioner by an interim order declared that the house consisted of two independent and separate units and found the respondent entitled to the portion in his occupation only. The transfer' of tit: portion in the possession of the petitioner was, however, postponed to inquire whether he had built a house on a plot allotted to him in Peoples Colony in which case under the instructions then in force the petitioner as a local was not eligible for transfer. As no final order in the case had been made Mr. S. M. Azhar, Who succeeded Lt. Col. Khushi Muhammad, held the house to he indivisible and ruled out the claim of the petitioner on the ground that as a local he could not compete with the respondent a claimant displaced person. The Settlement Commissioner having declined to interfere with the order of Mr. S. M. Azhar the petitioner moved the High Court in writ jurisdiction on more than one ground none of which found favour with the learned Judges. The writ petition was, accordingly, dismissed from which I the petitioner seeks leave to appeal. A number of grounds are set out in the petition, but the ground urged by Dr. Nasim Hasan Shah before us is not included in them, namely that Lt.-Col. Khushi Muhammad in dividing the house into two separate units had acted as a delegatee of the Chief Settlement Commissioner within section 2(4) of the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act and his order was not open to review either by his successor or by the Higher Settlement authorities. In the case of Ch. Bahar Muhammad v. The Chief Settle ment Commissioner C. P. S. L. A. No. 58 of 1962 decided on 4th April 1962, the plea as raised by Dr. Nasim Hasan Shan was accepted, but thereafter the Displaced Persons (Compensation 1 and Rehabilitation) Act was amended by Ordinance XVIII of 1965 and it was provided as under; "(3) Any order passed by a Settlement Commissioner or an Additional, Deputy or Assistant Settlement Commissioner in exercise of any power delegated to him under subsection (2) shall be, and be deemed always to have been, subject to the provisions of Chapter VI in the same manner and to the same extent as any other order passed by a Settlement Corn- I missioner, Additional, Deputy or Assistant Settlement Commissioner, as the case may be, is so subject " In effect the exercise of power delegated to the subordinate Settlement Authorities by the Chief Settlement Commissione under section 31 of the Displaced Persons (Compensation an Rehabilitation) Act including the power under section 2(4) to declare a house to consist of more than one residential units 4 was made amenable to review in appeal and revision by the higher Settlement Authorities with retrospective effect. Since then a number of petitions and appeals in which a similar question was raised have been disposed of as concluded by the said amendment. It was pointed out that leave to\appeal has been granted in some cases to consider the vires of the amending Ordinance under the due process of law-Clause in Article 2 of the Con stitution and a Full Bench decision of the High Court of East Pakistan on the point We do not propose to examine the correctness of the plea raised by the learned counsel, because asst mentioned above no ground to this effect is raised in the petition for leave to appeal. The petition is in the result dismissed. Petition dismissed.