Jammu and Kashmir High Court: A Single Judge Bench of Dhiraj Singh Thakur J., dismissed the petition filed under Article 104 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, and upheld the order passed by the 1st Additional District Judge.
The respondents, in this case, were owners and in possession of the land which was situated in Beli Azmat, Jammu. They agreed to alienate the land, and in furtherance of this, an agreement to sell was entered into. The petitioners contended that despite the said agreement being in force, the respondents did not execute the sale deed, as a result of which a suit for specific performance was filed.
After the order for specific performance was passed, it was challenged by one of the respondents by a suit of declaration. The previous order for specific performance was stayed till the time that the suit for declaration was adjudicated.
Rent was being paid to the respondents by the Department of Agriculture, and the petitioners argued that the same should not be paid till the time the suit for specific performance of the sale deed was settled. The 1st Additional District Judge rejected the argument on the ground that the sale deed was obtained by collusion and that there was no valid document for transfer of title to the petitioners.
Aggrieved by the order, the petitioner filed contempt proceedings, claiming that even though rent was only to be paid to respondent 1 to the extent of his share, yet the rental compensation was being distributed with regard to property. The contempt proceedings were also dismissed by the 1st Additional Judge.
In the present petition, the Court held that the order given did not suffer from any illegality, as whatever rights they claimed were as a result of the suit for specific performance, which had been stayed. Consequently, the petitioners had lost all rights to question the dispensation of rental compensation to the respondents. [Bansi Lal v. Vijay Chand Katoch,2018 SCC OnLine J&K 802, Order dated 03-11-2018]
