P L D 1969 Lahore 651 (PLP)

4. In the High Court the petitioner R as made a party on his own application and when Hassan Din's writ petition was accepted, be questioned the validity of High Court's order before the Supreme Court. The petitioner's appeal was accepted by the Supreme Court to this extent that their Lordships were pleased to remand the case to the Claims Commissioner for determination whether the valuation of the claim by the Mir Ajam Khan called for interference and if so what was, in his judgment, the correct valuation. Persuant to this Order the Claims Commissioner, Sargodha Division, has reduced the claim of Hassan Din inasmuch as that the rental value of cinema, which was previously verified at Rs. 200 p. m. by Mir Ajam Khan has been reduced to Rs. 150 only. Now the petitioner has came to this Court and questions the validity of verification order of respondent Hassan Din.

5. I had my doubts about the locus standi of the petitioner to maintain the petition under Article 98 of the Constitution against the order of the Claims Commissioner in which he was neither a necessary nor a proper party, nor his interests in any way were affected by the order of verification. The Act of 1956 gives only a right of appeal and revision to an "aggrieved person", under section 7 of the Act and under Article 98 of the Constitu tion also the application is competent by an "aggrieved party". The verification of claims is a matter between the person who abandoned some rights in immovable property or in an industrial concern etc., in certain circumstances in India and the State who wants to give them some grant by way of compensation. The strangers to the abandoned property in any view cannot be held to be an aggrieved person or an aggrieved party.

6. Mr. Gul Muhammad Khan, learned counsel for the petitioner argued that the petitioner is interested in the matter because if Hassan Din's claim under Schedule III is set aside he will make an exit from Nishat Cinema which is in his possession and then the petitioner will be able to obtain its transfer from the Settlement Authorities. In my view if this argument is allowed to prevail it is likely to result in a mischief of highest order and a hardship of greatest magnitude to the refugees who have since been settled. A non‑claimant displaced person, who has been eleminated by a claimant for the transfer of an indivisible house can come forward and challenge the verified claim of his adversary on the ground that it was obtained by fraudulent means. Similarly in a fight between the two claimants when the property is given to one on the basis of prior possession the unsuccessful claimant can easily come forward and question the validity of the order of Claim authorities in writ jurisdiction. Even a local who has been ousted by a claimant displaced person can now come forward and challenge the verified claim of the other side on the ground that in case, the claim is rejected he will be eligible to ask for the transfer of the property as an available evacuee property under Scheme No. VIII. These are a few examples which I have given to illustrate my point that a member of the public at large cannot be allowed to question the verification of a claim passed under the Act of 1956. In my opinion it was for very salutory reasons that the public at large was excluded from becoming a party before claim Courts. Therefore, the argument that if the claim of the other side is set aside the petitioner will be able to grab the evacuee, property cannot and should not be allowed to make him and aggrieved person under Article 98 of the Constitution. The intention of the law‑maker was to give finality to verification of claim and subsection (5) of section 7 was enacted with this purpose in view. The same intention of finality is expressed in section 22 of the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1958, to the orders of transfer of evacuee property and the strangers to the claim or property should not be allowed to come in contest, otherwise, there will be no end of litigation in this branch of law which has so long remained hanging on the fate of nation for the last 21 years.

7. Raunaq Ali and the petitioner's son Rafiq Ahmad who had made the application to the Enforcement Staff and Martial Law Regulation No. 49, are no longer in the field. They did not contest the claim of the respondent before the Claims Commissioner nor they have come to this Court in writ petition. Even Martial Law Regulation under which the previous proceedings were commenced against the respondent is no longer in force and stands duly repealed by Article 225 of the Constitution. At best the petitioner is no better than an informer. The notification of the Central Government which authorised the informers to come forward and place at the disposal of the au ho rities material relating to the illegal or irregular transfer of evacuee property has also long last its force when suction 10 (b) of the Act of 1958, under which it has issued, was amended by Ordinance II of 1962 on the 131 of January 1952. In my opinion, therefore, the petitioner has no locus standi to maintain this petition and be cannot be called as an aggrieved party under Article 98 of the Constitution.

8. In the view which I have taken above, I am fortified by the two authoritative pronouncements of the Supreme Court, namely, Muhammad Siddiq v. Chief Settlement and Rehabilitation Commissioner (PLD 1965 SC 123), in which the effect of the notification of Central Government has been discussed. The second case is that of Mst. Abida Khatoon v. Ghulam Shabbir (PLD 1965 SC 123). The principles of the second case as laid down by their Lordships are fully attracted to the present case and the following passage from their judgment can be quoted with advantage. It reads:‑ "The writ appears to have been moved in the belief (1) that the informant, like a complainant in a criminal case has an interest in the end result, and, therefore, independent locus standi to pursue the proceeding and (2) that in the event of the information leading to a positive result, the informant has a vested interest in the property. Neither of these suppositions has the least support in law. If the Settlement Authorities acting on reference by the Enforcement Staff hold the transfer to be irregular, the transferee having a vested right in the property, may move by way of appeal, and if a writ be competent, in the High Court. But the informant has no vested right in the property, and certainly would have no right of appeal or revision under the Displaced Persons (Compen sation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1958, to have the decision reconsidered or reversed, if it went in favour of the transfer being regular. At the most, should there have been no enquiry, or if the proceedings were merely colourable, with no visible effort to investigate the allegation of irregularity, certiorari may perhaps be available to oblige the authorities to act in accordance with the law." Their Lordships concluded the judgment by saying that :‑‑ "There being no conceivable vested interest in the informant, the relief by writ was clearly inadmissible." There is no favourable order in favour of the petitioner. He cannot therefore be deemed to have a vested interest in the property which has been transferred to the respondent under the Act of 1958. Thus the argument, which proceeds on the hope that the High Court may in the end result hold the order of the Claims Commissioner as without lawful authority and as a consequence thereof the transfer order of the respondent in the evacuee property will be affected and the petitioner will be benefited thereby, in my opinion is too far fetched and too remote to connect him with the verification of the claim as an aggrieved person. I have not been able to find any support for this supposition in law.

9. Learned counsel for the petitioner has drawn my atten tion to the observations of Supreme Court in this case reported as Amir‑ud‑Din v. Claims Commissioner (PLD 1968 SC 165) where preliminary objection to the competence of the appeal was raised on the ground that the appellant not being a party to the proceedings in which the respondent's claim was verified at various stages had no locus standi to impugn the order of the High Court by which the order of Claims Commissioner was set aside and the order of Mir Ajam Khan, was allowed to remain in the field. Their Lordships repelled this objection with that observation that the petitioner and the respondent were rival claimants for the transfer of Nishat Cinema, Sargodha, and if the order of High Court was recalled and the impugned order of Claims Commissioner was maintained the entitlement of both the parties will be at par therefore, the petitioner had a real interest in defending the order of the Claims Commis sioner and seeking reversal of the order of the High Court in appeal.

10. I respectfully bow before the observations of their Lordships of the Supreme Court but in my humble opinion the circumstances in which the petitioner was allowed to dispute the order of the High Court in appeal before the Supreme Court are no longer available to the petitioner. In the first place, I. would like to say that at that time there was an order of the Claims Commissioner in the ultimate result of which some benefit could have accrued to the petitioner and that order was, for the first time, set aside by the High Court. Therefore, the petitioner was allowed to maintain the appeal. In the second place, the petitioner was made a party in the High Court on his own application and h was impleaded as respondent in spite of the objection of the respondent. The appeal before the Supreme Court was in continuation of the proceedings instituted by the respondent in the High Court under Clause II (4) of the Laws (Continuance in Force) Order of 1958 and the petitioner being a party in it before the High Court the objection of the respondent about his competency to maintain the appeal before Supreme Court was overruled and it was held that he being a party "had a locus stand! to bring it under challenge".

11. Moreover, the power to implead a patty can be exercised by a Court as and when it appears to it to be just or it is considered necessary to effectually and completely adjudi cate upon and settle all the questions in controversy. Now he is not a respondent nor he has been made a party by the order of the Court. He is coming to invoke the jurisdiction of this Court under Article 98 of the Constitution as a petitioner, he, therefore, must show independently of the previous proceedings that he has some determinable right directly connected with the construction of the impugned order and that such right is relatable to the controversy in the order under dispute. The mere interest in an action, or a hope in the ultimate result that if he succeeds in writ some other proceedings will be affected, will not make him an "aggrieved party." The authority, therefore, which is more aptly attracted to the circumstances of the present case is that of Mst. Abida Khatoon v. Ghulam Shabbir.

12. Even on merits I do not find that the petitioner has any case. Learned counsel for the petitioner argued that the superstructure of the building used for cinema house cannot be verified as a' property under Schedule III but it should have been verified under Schedule I. In this connection it was urged that the respondent had only constructed the four walls of the building and there was neither machinery nor any other appurtenances and it was merely a hull and had no semblance of a property within the meaning of Schedule III of the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1958. I do not think there is any force in this argument. Under the Act of 1956, Claim has been defined as the assertion of the right to the ownership of or any interest in the property which has been treated as an evacuee property under any law for the time being in force in India, etc. Under subsection (2) of section 2 the property has been defined as "immovable property" situated within the limits of corporation etc. The respondent claims the cinema house known as Hari Palace under Schedule III, its site was on lease with him and the building was let out on rent by him to one Sita Ram. The cinema was under a mortgage for a sum of Rs. 10,000 and the respondent has filed a suit at Ambala for the redemption of mortgage on the ground that the mortgage money had been paid through the rent etc., of the cinema. In proof of his title he has produced notice Exh. P. 8 issued from the District Magistrate, Jullundar on the 17th of September 1945, calling upon him to do certain repairs and Exh. P. 9, a notice issued by Lala Sita Ram, Advocate, Exh. P. 10 is a notice which was issued from the Municipal Committee Jullundar, for the demolition of a wall of the cinema house and the res pondent stated in column No. 21 of the Schedule No. III that the cinema was insured for a sum of Rs. 16,

000. Taking into consideration all oral and documentary evidence the Claims Officer came to the conclusion that he had a title for the verifica tion of a cinema and its rental value was fixed at Rs. 100 p. m. In appeal Mir Ajam Khan enhanced it to Rs.

200. The petitioner also did not dispute his title in the first instance and the complaint was that its value had been exaggerated. I do not think that at the present stage it is possible for me to hold with the learned counsel for the petitioner that it was merely a hall and not a cinema. I am sure Lala Sita Ram, Advocate, was not so bene volent as to have obtained a mere hall from a Muslim owner as a cinema on rent. The issuance of the notice by the District Magistrate and the Municipal Committee, the insurance policy obtained for the protection of the cinema and the terms and conditions of its mortgage that its rent was to be settled up against the principle and interest leave no doubt in my mind that there was a cinema in existence and under the ownership of the respondent. I do not think that the claim authorities were wrong to verify it.

13. The respondent was dissatisfied with the order of certification and he claimed enhancement of rent which was granted to him by Mir Ajam Khan by his order dated the 1st of November 1957 and its. rent was increased from Its. 100 to Rs. 200 p m. However, the learned Claims Commissioner, after remand by the Supreme Court, in his impugned order has reduced the rent at Rs.

150. The Supreme Court had remanded the case to the Claims Commissioner for two things (i) whether the verification done by Mir Ajam Khan called for inter ference, (ii) if so what was in his judgment, the correct valuation. The finding of fact on both these questions has now 6~en given by the learned officer in his impugned order after consideration of the relevant material on record and there is noticing in it which can be called as illegal or perverse. The learn'‑,d officer, after taking into consideration every conceivable material has held that nothing liberal could be found out from the orders of the Additional Claims Commissioner except that the rent was to be reduced to Rs. 150 p. m. and I do not think that any exception can be taken to this verification.

14. The second contention of the learned counsel was that the respondent has obtained this property on lease which was valid only up to January 1947 and he had to remove his structure within a month of the expiry of the lease otherwise he had to pay the damages to the owner of the cite, therefore, respondent was left no verifiable claim in any immovable property or a cinema house in India. According to the learned counsel since this piece of evidence has not been considered by tile Claims Commissioner his order suffers from an error patent on the face of the record. I do not think there is any force in this argument of the learned counsel also if a person has constructed upon the land of another on the condition that he wilt remove the superstructure after the expiry of the period fixed by the lease then the lessee does not lose his right in the superstructure after the expiry of the said period. At the most the landlord will be entitled to charge for use and occupation of the land or he can bring a suit for the removal of the structure against the lessee but there is no provision of the law that by mere efflux of time fixed by the lease the superstructure is reduced to nothing and the lessee loses all the rights and interest therein. At any rate this argument does not seem to have been urged before the learned Claims Commissioner. I, therefore do not allow it at this belated stage. Be that as it may, I do not consider that any prejudice has been caused to the petitioner's cage by non- consideration of the terms of the lease between the respondent and his landlord.

15. It is not contended that respondent had ho cinema house in India. It is also not urged that there was no enquiry by the Claims Commissioner. It is also not the petitioner's case that the proceedings were colourable, and mala fide or there was no legal investigation of the respondents rights Under the Act of 1956. The solitary ground on which the case is built is that the claim should have been verified under Schedule I and not under Schedule III of the Act of "1956. Even if it were so it will not in the least affect or materially alter the claim of the respondent for the transfer of the cinema under his possession under the provision of para. 15 of the Schedule to the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1958. The Claims Commissioner has come to the conclusion that the property left by the petitioner was a cinema the requirement of sub‑para. (2) of para. 15, therefore, will be fulfilled as it merely lays down that a claimant who owned a cinema in India must be in possession of a cinema in Pakistan and there is no further provision or limitation that such a claimant should have a verified claim under Schedule III of the Act of 1956. The petitioner will, therefore, have no case even if the respondent's claim is shifted to Schedule I.

16. As a result of the above discussion I do not find any merit in this case. The petition, therefore, fails and I dismiss the same in limine. K. B. A. Petition dismissed.