Court No. - 44
Case :- WRIT - B No. - 983 of 2019 Petitioner :- Ram Swaroop And 2 Others Respondent :- Consolidation Officer, Jalaun And 7 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Chaudhary Subhash Kumar Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Awdhesh Narayan Srivastava,Sandeep Kumar
Hon'ble Rajiv Joshi,J.
Heard Sri Chaudhary Subhash Kumar, counsel for the petitioners as well as learned standing counsel representing the State-respondents.
The present writ petition has been preferred challenging the orders dated 12.3.2019 and 30.3.2019 passed by the Deputy Director of Consolidation/ City Magistrate, Orai whereby Revision no. 230, under section 48(1) of the U.P. Consolidation of Holdings Act ( for short the 'Act') filed by the petitioner and the recall application, was dismissed.
While assailing the order impugned, the main contention of the learned counsel for petitioner is that the City Magistrate cannot be delegated the power of a Deputy Director of Consolidation in view of the provisions of section 3(4-A) and 3(4-B) of the Act, and ,therefore, the order impugned is without jurisdiction.
Learned standing counsel for the State respondents, submits that the issue in question has earlier come up for consideration and decided by this Court vide judgment and order dated 2.4.2019 in Writ-B No. 548 of 2019, Kunwar Pal Vs. Deputy Director of Consolidation and five others, and hence the present writ petition may also be decided on the basis of the said judgment.
Perusal of the judgment in Kunwar Pal's case (supra) shows that the question involved therein was as to whether the District Magistrate can sub delegate the power of Deputy Director of Consolidation to the City Magistrate or not, and the Court while deciding the said issue, took the view that the delegated powers cannot be sub delegated or delegated any further and ultimately held that sub delegation of his delegated powers by the District Deputy Director of Consolidation upon the City Magistrate is without any sanction of law. The relevant extract of the said judgment for ready reference is reproduced hereinbelow :
"Under the circumstances, this Court has no hesitation in holding that the sub-delegation of his delegated powers by the District Deputy Director of Consolidation upon the City Magistrate is without any sanction of law. The City Magistrate is therefore, not competent to act as the Deputy Director of Consolidation and for this reason alone, the order impugned passed by him is wrongly without jurisdiction and is liable to be set aside."
In view of the above, the orders impugned dated 12.3.2019 and 30.3.2019 passed by the Deputy Director of Consolidation/City Magistrate, Orai are set aside and the matter is remitted to the District Deputy Director of Consolidation to either decide the revision himself or to transfer it to some other duly constituted authority, namely the Deputy Director of Consolidation or Assistant Director of Consolidation for deciding the revision on its merits after hearing the parties.
The writ petition stands allowed. No order as to costs.
Order Date :- 30.5.2019 SNT/