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Judgment
A.J.Desai, J
By way of present appeal under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent, present appellants - original petitioners have challenged the order dated 12.03.2021 passed by learned Single Judge in captioned writ petition, by which, learned Single Judge has refused to interfere with the orders passed by the concerned authorities, by which, an application filed for condonation of delay in challenging the orders confiscating the land of the appellants for breaching the conditions of the land, which was granted to the forefathers of the appellants was dismissed on the ground of huge delay and that too, without proper action.
Short facts arise from the record are that the case of the original petitioners is that the land in question is an agricultural land bearing Survey No. 214/1 admeasuring 00-15-18 H-R- Sq.mtrs. situated at Village Gothada, Taluka Savali, District : Vadodara. It is the case of the petitioners that some where in the year 1930, the revenue record reflects that originally the said land runs in the name of Karsaniya Lakhiya, who expired and by way of mutation entry no. 1025, name of Mangalbhai Krushna came to be entered in the revenue record. In the year 1951-52, according to the petitioners, it is falsely reflected that the said land is allotted by the Government by way of mutation entry no. 2937 and the forefather of the petitioners were made agriculturist since 1951-52 onwards and despite that the erroneous entry came to be mutated. It is the case of the petitioners that on 20.06.1986 the Deputy Collector, Savali has executed a false case for breach of condition against the forefather of the petitioners and mutated the land in the name of the Government by way of an order as stated in Case No. Vatan/Vashi/1149/86. According to the petitioners, in the year 2019, the Government has published a scheme for farmers and in the said scheme the Government gave Rs.6,000/- per month who is the farmer and who possess agricultural land and, therefore, with a view to get the said benefit one Jethabhai Mangalbhai Vankar who is the husband of petitioner no. 1 and father of petitioner no. 2 has taken out the relevant revenue record right from the year 1951-52 to 2019-19 which came to be received in the month of May, 2019. Accordingly, the said Jethabhai Mangalbhai Vankar having realized, had challenged the said order which was passed in the year 1986 by way of an appeal before the Collector, along with delay condonation application. The petitioners case is that without considering the facts and circumstances of the case, the Collector, Vadodara was pleased to reject the application for condonation of delay vide order dated 14.10.2019 and feeling aggrieved by the same, the petitioners approached respondent no. 1 i.e. Secretary (Appeals) Revenue Department, by filing Revision Application No. MVV/JMN/Vadad/11 of 2019 under Section 211 of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code read with Rule 108 (6-A) of the Gujarat Land Revenue Rules. According to the petitioners during the pendency of the said revision application, on 16.03.2020, the said Jethabhai Mangalbhai Vankar passed away and petitioner no. 1 being widow and petitioner no. 2 daughter of said Jethabhai Mangalbhai Vankar became the owner of the said land and as such have made an attempt to prosecute further the revision application. Further, according to the petitioners without considering all these relevant circumstances vide order dated 22.06.2020, the Secretary, (Appeals) Revenue Department, was pleased to dismiss the revision application and confirmed the order passed by the Collector. The aforesaid order was challenged by the original petitioners by way of filing captioned writ petition. The learned Single Judge, having found no substance in the petition, upheld the reasons assigned by two authorities, who have refused delay of 32 years in challenging the order. Hence, this appeal.
Mr. Dharmesh Gurjar, learned advocate for the appellants, would submit that the authorities as well as learned Single Judge ought to have considered the fact that the applicants are totally illiterate persons and were not aware about the orders passed by the authorities. He, therefore, would submit that the appeal may be allowed.
We have heard learned advocates appearing for the respective parties. Perused the order passed by the concerned authorities as well as gone through the order passed by learned Single Judge. It is an undisputed fact that the orders, which were challenged by the appellants, were passed before 32 years and 11 months. The observations made by learned Single Judge in Para – 5 of the order, which reads as under :
“5. Having heard the learned advocates appearing for the respective sides and having gone through the material on record, it appears that there is a huge time gap by the petitioners in assailing the proceedings and there is a categorical undisputed conclusion made by the revisional authority that the petitioners have taken time of more than 32 years and 11 months in challenging the action. In addition thereto, the conclusion which has been arrived at by the revisional authority is after proper scrutiny of the relevant material and upon critical analysis of the conclusion made by the Collector and that being the position in no case it has been said that any perversity is reflecting in the order passed by the authority. In addition to this, it is settled proposition of law that right from the beginning the revenue jurisdiction is to be exercised within a reasonable period and for reasonable time, which cannot be in any case 32 years and 11 months and that being so, on this count, the order is not possible to be reversed by this Court in exercise of extra ordinary jurisdiction. Since the Court has considered the said proposition of law enunciated by the Apex Court right from the case of Ragav Natha (supra), even the said proposition is recently reiterated in the case of Telangana Housing Board v. Azamunnisa Begum (Died) Through Legal Representatives & Ors. reported in (2018) 7 SCC 346 and since this Court has considered the same, the relevant observations contained in para 59 and 60 are reproduced hereinafter:
“59. It is now well settled that where no time limit is specified, whatever is required to be done should be within a reasonable period. In Collector v. P. Mangamma, it was held in paragraphs 5 and 6 as follows:
A reasonable period would depend upon the factual circumstances of the case concerned. There cannot be any empirical formula to determine that question. The court/authority considering the question whether the period is reasonable or not has to take into account the surrounding circumstances and relevant factors to decide that question.
In State of Gujarat v. Patel Raghav Natha 8 it was observed that when even no period of limitation was prescribed, the power is to be exercised within a reasonable time and the limit of the reasonable time must be determined by the facts of the case and the nature of the order which was sought to be varied.........”. Reasonable, being a relative term is essentially what is rational according to the dictates of reason and not excessive or immoderate on the facts and circumstances of the particular case.”
Similarly, in Joint Collector Ranga Reddy District v. D. Narsing Rao 9 the exercise of revisional jurisdiction where no timelimit is specified was considered and it was held in paragraph 31 of the Report as follows:
“31. To sum up, delayed exercise of revisional jurisdiction is frowned upon because if actions or transactions were to remain forever open to challenge, it will mean avoidable and endless uncertainty in human affairs, which is not the policy of law. Because, even when there is no period of limitation prescribed for exercise of such powers, the intervening delay, may have led to creation of third party rights, that cannot be trampled by a belated exercise of a discretionary power especially when no cogent explanation for the delay is in sight. Rule of law it is said must run closely with the rule of life. Even in cases where the orders sought to be revised are fraudulent, the exercise of power must be within a reasonable period of the discovery of fraud. Simply describing an act or transaction to be fraudulent will not extend the time for its correction to infinity; for otherwise the exercise of revisional power would itself be tantamount to a fraud upon the statute that vests such power in an authority.”
In view of the above, we are in agreement with the observations made by learned Single Judge. We do not find any substance in the appeal. Accordingly, appeal is dismissed.