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Judgment
The petitioner has filed this application under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India, praying that an order passed by the Additional Member, Board of Revenue, incorporated in An-nexure 11 may be quashed. What has happened in this case is that an application filed by opposite party No. 1 for pre-empting certain lands under the Bihar Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling Area and Acquisition of Surplus Land) Act 1961, has succeeded. The petitioner had purchased plot No. 775 in Khata No. 131, having an area of 8 Kathas 9 Dhurs in 1965 and an application for pre-emption had been filed on the 19th February 1966 which has succeeded.
The only question which has been raised by the learned counsel for the petitioner is that u/s 16 (3) of the Act, only a raiyat of an adjoining land can apply for pre-emption and opposite party No. 1 was not a raiyat of the adjoining land, namely plot No. 776. For this argument, our attention has been drawn to Annexure I, which was the application for pre-emption. Reference has been made to the last portion of Schedule IT of that application where the following sentence occrus:
"The plot of the land namely plot No. 776 held by the applicant is partly for agricultural purpose and partly for homestead."
According to the learned counsel for the petitioner, this assertion made by opposite party No. 1 shows that he was not a raiyat of plot No. 776. But, this argument is of no avail on a perusal of Annexure 1 as a whole. In Paragraph 3 it was stated that the applicant was a raiyat holding land and he had repeated in that paragraph that he was a raiyat having land adjoining the land specified in Schedule I, namely, plot No. 776.
In such circumstances, it is difficult to accede to the contention raised by the learned counsel for the petitioner that opposite party No. 1 was not a raiyat of the adjoining land. Moreover, it does not appear that this contention had been raised before the Board of Revenue and as a matter of fact the learned counsel for the petitioner could hardly show that this point has been taken in this Court also in such a specific manner. In such circumstances, this application cannot succeed. It is dismissed, but without costs.