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1. This group of writ petitions raises just one point namely the question as to whether the Land Tribunal at Bangalore which is hearing the cases was justified in passing the order dated 30-6-1998 refusing to transfer the pending applications to the Special Deputy Commissioner and insisting on going on with the cases. The reason why there are about 20 writ petitions is because there are that many applicants. A contention was raised before the Tribunal by the petitioners to the effect that since the lands in question were originally inam lands that the designated authority under law who is empowered to hear and decide the applications is the Special Deputy Commissioner and not the Land Tribunal. The respondents who are the applicants and the land owner etc. pointed out to the Tribunal that this litigation has had a long history and that even on the last occasion when the case came up to the High Court by way of W.P. No. 26983 of 1997 that my brother Vishwanath, J., through order dated 23-10-1997 refused to interfere with the interim order passed by tbe Tribunal whereby the present petitioners had desired that the validity of the Form No. 7 should be decided as a preliminary issue. The case was remanded to the Tribunal with a direction that it should proceed with the hearing. It was therefore contended before the Tribunal by the respondents' learned advocates that even as late as last year the petitioners had not raised any objection to the Tribunal's jurisdiction that after the remand order from the High Court as many as 17 witnesses have been examined and the next witnesse's evidence is incomplete, that the case has made substantial progress and is close to being decided and that in this background, the application is an afterthought, that it is belated and that it should not be entertained. The Tribunal refused to transfer the cases, one of the obvious reasons being that both on this occasion as also on an earlier occasion in March 1994, the High Court had remanded the cases to the Tribunal and at no time had any objection been raised with regard to the correctness of that authority hearing the disputes.

2. Appearing in support of the petitioners, the learned Advocate Mr. Srinivasan pointed out to me that Act No. 26 of 1979 which was really an amendment to the Inams Abolition Act whereby the cases of the present type were sought to be entrusted to the Tribunal for decision has been struck down by this Court and that the Act itself has been declared to be ultra vires and the State Government accepted the verdict of the High Court pursuant to which the Circular dated 30-8-1997 was issued whereby it was very clearly pointed out that the Special Deputy Commissioners were required to hear and decide all pending cases of this type including those which would have otherwise gone to the Tribunal. Mr. Srinivasan pointed out that there can be no dispute about the fact that the lands which are the subject-matter of this litigation are inam lands and he contended that consequently the statutorily designated authority is the Special Deputy Commissioner which position has been clarified by the State Government in its circular and he therefore maintained that if the Tribunal insists on proceeding with the case that it would be acting without jurisdiction and that ultimately whatever orders the Tribunal passes would be stillborn. On this ground, he justifies the petitioners having moved the Tribunal for transfer of the cases to the Special Deputy Commissioner. One of the problems in the way of the Tribunal apparently was that normally, the power to transfer is not a power which would have vested with that forum and consequently, it does appear that the Tribunal felt handicapped in the face of this position. More importantly however, since the case had been remanded to the Tribunal and since it was a substantially part heard matter, the Tribunal expressed the view that it was competent to hear and decide the dispute. Mr. Srinivasan's contention is that in the face of the legal position the Tribunal's order is unjustified and that therefore the same ought to be quashed.

lar of the State Government dated 30-8-1997 that no authority other than the Special Deputy Commissioner can hear and decide these cases.

6. I need to point out that on the basis of several decisions, the respondents' learned Counsel submitted that it is still permissible for the Tribunal to hear these cases. The most important of the decisions relied upon was the case in Muniyallappa v B.M. Krishnamurthy and Others, wherein the applicant had approached the Tribunal after the rejection of the claim for occupancy rights under the Inams Abolition Act was denied. This High Court took the view that such an application was not competent but the Supreme Court pointed out that the rejection of the application by the authority under the Inams Abolition Act did not preclude the applicant from moving the Tribunal. The learned Counsel submitted to me that the spirit of this decision implies that even after the land was categorised as inam land even if the applicant has filed Form No. 7 and has moved the Tribunal that the Tribunal is empowered to decide that case. To my mind, this would be doing violence to the legal position. It would also constitute a misreading of the Supreme Court decision. What the Supreme Court had held was that if the authority under the Inams Abolition Act rejected the application that it was not the end of the road for the applicant who may have still have been able to agitate the rights under the Land Reforms Act. One needs to consider the fact that once the application has been rejected by the other authority that by implication it is quite clear that the authority was not the right one and that therefore, it is permissible to approach the Tribunal.

7. I need to deal with the submissions canvassed by the learned Counsel in this regard because they did point out another aspect of the law which emerges from this decision. Their contention was that even if in Muniyallappa's case, supra, he had first approached the authority under the Inams Abolition Act, the fact that his application was rejected leaves one with the position that the applicant had got no order and the Supreme Court still upheld the position that he was entitled to approach the Tribunal and they therefore submitted that hypothetically if the respondents had applied to the authority under the Inams Abolition Act and failed there that they could have still agitated their rights before the Tribunal and under these circumstances they contended that it is not necessary that they should first go there and then come here because the Supreme Court decision indicated that the Tribunal was not wholly without jurisdiction. Though the argument is rather involved, I need to point out that the position requires a little bit of clarification. What the Supreme Court has held is that even if a party has exhausted the previous remedy that it would not act as a legal bar or res judicata against the party but that decision can never be construed to mean that it would justify the respondents bypassing the authority and coming to the Tribunal directly. That to my mind is the correct legal position.