Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh High Court has ordered that the Additional Collector of Narmadapuram district, Devendra Singh, and the Tehsildar of the district’s Seoni Malwa town, Rakesh Khajuria, be sent on training for a period of six months and their quasi-judicial and magisterial powers be withdrawn for one year.
In its 26 July order, made available Tuesday, the court observed that the authorities have “deliberately misinterpreted the HC’s order” with the sole intention to “play mischief” with the petitioner and were motivated by “extraneous” circumstances.’
The court also criticised in strong words the action of Narmadapuram Collector Sonia Meena in sending a letter addressed to the court via additional collector Singh, seeking exemption from personal appearance, instead of filing an application for the same. The court has asked the chief secretary of the state to submit a report on her ‘misadventures’ within a month.
A single judge bench of justice G.S. Ahluwalia, while hearing a miscellaneous petition filed by one Pradeep Aggarwal, granted the petitioner the liberty to prosecute Rakesh Khajuria and Devendra Kumar Singh under the provision of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, while observing that “both the revenue officers have exercised their power in a malicious, arbitrary manner for extraneous considerations, therefore they are not entitled for protection under The Judges (Protection) Act.”
The court not only quashed the entire proceeding of the revenue court while allowing the petition of Pradeep Aggarwal, it also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the respondents.
The matter reached the HC in September when Nitin Aggarwal filed for mutation before the tehsildar seeking that name of all legal representatives be recorded in revenue records of the property left behind by Sona Bai, his great grandmother.
Aggrieved by Nitin’s move, his uncle Pradeep appealed against it before the sub-divisional officer (SDO), leading to Nitin’s application being cancelled by the SDO. Nitin then approached the additional commissioner. Failing to get a favourable response from the additional commissioner, Nitin moved the HC in September 2023.
Responding to Nitin Agarwal’s miscellaneous petition filed in September 2023, Pradeep had claimed that as per the order of a civil court order passed in 1976, a compromise decree was reached on a case filed by his mother Premlata Bai, and a significant portion of the property owned by Sona bai was left to him, with a will in his favour.
The HC in September, while hearing a petition filed by Nitin, had set aside the orders passed by the tehsildar, SDO and additional commissioner over the mutation applications and resulting objections, and instead ordered the tehsildar to decide the application afresh strictly based on the compromise decree passed by the civil judge in 1976. The HC also directed the tehsildar to positively decide the matter by the end of February 2024.
Following this, Pradeep moved the Supreme Court through the special leave petition which was dismissed in January 2024. Soon after this, Nitin moved a fresh application before the tehsildar, seeking compliance with the September 2023 order of the High Court, but now seeking partition instead of mutation.
Despite various objections raised by Pradeep against Nitin’s application seeking partition, tehsildar Rakesh Khajuria said that the HC had set aside previous mutation orders and instead directed the patwari to send a proposal for partition.
Pradeep then approached Additional Collector Singh against the tehsildar’s orders to patwari for partition, but his appeal was dismissed. Singh cited that the tehsildar had completed the work in stipulated time frame as asked by the HC.
Challenging the order of the revenue court, Pradeep then approached Jabalpur High Court, pleading that the HC had never directed to proceed with partition and that a suit for declaration of title is still pending before the trial court.
The single bench headed by justice Ahluwalia observed, “Admittedly, there is no decree by the Civil Court for partition. Admittedly, there is no decree by any revenue court for partition. Admittedly there is no application under section 178 of MP Land Revenue Code for partition and without any application, the tehsildar directed the patwari to submit a proposal for partition.”
The court added, “How such a direction can be given by misquoting the order of the high court could not be explained by the tehsildar. Under these circumstances, the submissions made by the counsel of petitioner that the entire proceedings were for some extraneous consideration cannot be ignored in a very light manner.”
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‘Tehsildar deliberately exceeded jurisdiction’
The court noted that it had given an opportunity of personal hearing to tehsildar and additional collector to explain their conduct and further direct the collector, being the head of the district, to be personally present to assist the court. Tehsildar Rakesh Khajuria submitted that he could not understand the High Court order which was passed in October 2023 and it led to the issuing of wrong direction for partition. Khajuria further submitted an unconditional apology denying extraneous considerations. Meanwhile, Additional Collector Devendra Kumar explained that he was under the impression that the matter had to be decided by the end of February 2024, hence passed a two-line order to avoid non-compliance of order.
The court observed that the explanation given by Rajesh Khajuria and Devendra Kumar Singh, that they could not understand the court order, is nothing but a false stand.
“It is clear that the tehsildar had deliberately exceeded its jurisdiction by making an attempt to put a burden of the same on the shoulders of the High Court,” the court stated.
The court also came down heavily on Singh, who tried to pass on a brown envelope containing a letter from Collector Sonia Meena directly addressed to the court seeking an exemption from appearing.
The court said, “The Collector of Narmadapuram should have understood that her presence is required in a pending case and the state government is a litigant and the rights of the state government as litigant are similar to that of other private litigants. No litigant can be allowed to approach the court directly.”
“If the Collector, Narmadapuram, wanted to say anything, then she should have either filed an application before the registry of this court in the proper format or should have got an application filed through the advocate general’s office, but instead of doing that, the Collector Narmadapuram through she can write a letter directly to the court.”
The HC then ordered the state chief secretary to look into the matter and take necessary steps against the “misadventures” of the collector and submit the report to the register within one month.
The court, observing that it was expected of Additional Collector Singh to know that he cannot directly hand over the envelope to the court, remarked that it is left to the wisdom of the chief secretary as to whether he could permit indiscipline and disrespectful conduct of his officers towards the court and whether he would like to “maintain the Majesty of Law as well as respect of constitution court or not?”
The court also asked the chief secretary to keep the copy of the court order in the service record of the tehsildar and the additional collector.