' This revision petition under rule 6 of the Thal Development Authority Colonization (Appeal and Revision) Rules, 1973, calls in question the order of the Settlement Officer, Leiah with the powers of Collector dated 20-6-1976 and the order of the Additional Commissioner, Multan dated 19-2-1977 refusing to grant in adjustment the share of the petitioners in the Khata Shamlat No, 127 of Mauza Patti Sultan Mahmood, Tehsil Kot Adu, District Muzaffargarh on the ground that share in Shamlat was to be given only to those Adna Malikan whose lands were assessed to land revenue during the First Regular Settlement of 1878-80, in terms of the entry of the last Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22.
2. The facts leading up to this case briefly are that the land comprising Khata Shamlat No, 127 was acquired by the Thal Development Authority through different notifications issued from time to time between 4-4-1951 and 16-7-1955 under section 36(1) and section 21(2) of the Thal Development Authority Act, 1949, for the purposes of the development of Thal. In pursuance of the directive of the Provincial Government as contained in memoranda dated 5-1-1952 and 1-5-1954, a part of the land so notified was to be retained by the Thal Development Authority according to the percentage prescribed in the said memoranda and as provided in subsection (2) of section 21 of the said Act and the rest was to be returned to the owners including the petitioners. While working out the returnable area of the petitioner, the Extra Assistant Colonization Officer, Leiah did not take into account their share in the khata shamlat on the ground that since their land was not assessed to land revenue in the first regular Settlement held in 1878-80, therefore, they were not entitled to the regnant of any area in adjustment against their share in the khata shamlat in view of the entries of the last Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22, by which shamlat was to be shared only by those owners whose wellslkhata chahat were assessed to land revenue during the Settlement of 1878-80 in accordance with hasab rasad khewat lama bandobast qanuni. Proceeding on this assumption, the Assistant Collector 2nd Grade, Kot Adu sanctioned Mutation No, 1733, on 17-4-1961 by way of Sehat Indraj Jama thereby conforming the entries of Mis! Haqiyat of 1878-80 to those of Mis! Haqiyat of 1921-22. This mutation was, however, cancelled by the Collector, That vide his order dated 9-6-1963, with the result that the entries of Jamabandi for the year 1949-50 which in the absence of the change brought about by the said mutation in the Mis! Haqiyat of 1878-80 was said to form the basis of adjustment rights of the petitioners were revived. Feeling aggrieved by the order of the Collector dated 9-6-1963, respondents Rahim Bakhsh and others filed an appeal before the Additional Commissioner, Multan who rejected it on 27-1-1964 and ordered departmental inquiry against the Assistant Collector 2nd Grade who had sanctioned one Mutation No, 1733. The respondents then filed a revision petition before the Board of Revenue, which was also rejected on 3-7-1969.
3. Thereafter, the petitioners moved applications before the Collector for adjustment of land in accordance with their rights as recorded in Jamabandi for the year 1949-50 as to their share in the Shamlat. The Collector, however, refused to admit their rights ride his order dated 20-6-1976. Their appeal was also dismissed by the Additional Commissioner on 19-2-1977. Hence this revision.
4. During the pendency of these proceedings, Rahim Bakhsh and 11 others applied for being impleaded as a party on the ground that they having vested rights in the shamlat in question were entitled to be heard before any final order was passed in the matter. Their request was accordingly granted and they were allowed to be impleaded as a party to these proceedings.
5. From the arguments addressed by the parties on different dates certain important questions of facts and law had cropped up requiring a close examination of the old record and the reports drawn up at various settlement operations. Since these documents were not at hand and had to be searched from the archives of the Deputy Commissioner, Muzaffargarh, Board of Revenue and the Provincial Secretariat, therefore the announcement of the final order in this case had to be withheld for quite some time.
6. The main submissions made in support of the petitioners' claim as to their share in the khata shamlat are these:, Firstly, that in all the three Wajib-ul-Arz prepared successively during the Settlements of 1878-80, 1901-2 and 1921-22 it has been consistently laid down that the shamlat deh would be shared by the owners in accordance with "hasab rasad khewat", that is to say, according to the measure of their share in the holdings and not on the basis of assessment on the holdings.
The same entries appeared in the ownership column of the two Misl Haqiyat of 1878-80 and 1901-2 and it was for the first time in the Misl Haqiyat prepared in 1921-22 that entry "hasah rasad khewat jama bandobast qanuni" had made appearance. This entry, it was submitted being inconsistent with the entries appearing in all the three Wajib-ul-Arz and those in the ownership columns of two Misl Haqiyat prepared during the Settlements of 1878-80 and 1901-2 could not be made the sole basis for determination of the rights of the petitioners in their khata shamlat.
' Secondly, that during the settlement of 1878-80 the assessment in question was fixed at Rs, 752, according to the cropped area on each well. This assessment though remained unchanged during 20 years term of the Settlement, yet whenever any old well fell out of use the assessment fixed on it was cancelled and levied on a new well which in the meantime had started working. It was submitted that since the wells of the respondents, namely, Sahib Aliwala, Dauloowala, Sheikhuwala, etc. Had ceased to work after 1892-93 and the lands cultivated thereon were abandoned, the assessm ent imposed on them was cancelled and with that the rights of shamlat appertaining thereto also extinguished. Reference in this connection was invited to Mutation No, 227 pertaining to Chah Sheikhuwala, which was sanctioned on 13-12-1896 without any order as to the transfer of share in shamlat. On the other hand, it was submitted, the wells of the petitioners, namely, Dul Mehnwali, Deewala, Lalewala, Ramzawala, Faqirwala and Lawani Lalwala started working and accordingly assessed to land revenue with the result that the owners thereof became entitled to the grant of sharnlat in accordance with " hasab rasad khewat". Reliance was placed in this regard on Mutations No, 175,297 and 395 sanctioned respectively on 23-5-1909, 24-12-1912 and 1-5-1915 by which share in shamlat had also been mutated.
' Thirdly, that according to the various notifications issued from time to time, under the Thal Development Act, 1949, and the Government Policy instructions contained in memo. No, 1765- 75/1793-S-II1, dated the 4th September, 1975, the ownership for the purpose of acquisition and the returnable rights were to be determined on the basis of the entries of Jamabandi prepared in 1949- 50 preceding the acquisition proceedings and not according to the assessment fixed on khata chahat during the Settlement of 1878-80.
7. In reply to the above, the State representative and the learned counsel for Rahim Bakhsh etc. Submitted as follows:-
(a) That according to the entries of the last Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22 only those owners were entitled to get share in the shamlat whose wells/ khatajat were assessed to land revenue during the Settlement of 1878-80 and since the wells of the petitioners with the exception of Naiwala and Jeetowala wells were not in existence during 1978.80 nor they were assessed to land revenue, therefore no share in Shamlat could be competently claimed by the petitioner in respect of these wells.
(b) That assessm ent in the Thal Circles which included Patti Sultan Mahmood being a fixed demand and not fluctuating were never cancelled on account of any well-being fallen out of use, though in cases of hardship remission of land revenue could be granted under the law. Again, the fact that the original assessm ent of Rs, 752, fixed on the wells of the respondents continued to be written separately in red ink irrespective of whether these wells remained at work or not, would clearly show that assessm ent fixed during the first regular Settlement of 1878-80 was kept intact which was for no purpose other than determining the shamlat rights of owners of these wells. As regards the mutations cited by the petitioners, it was submitted that the shares of shamlat mentioned therein were transferred on the basis of assessment fixed on these khata chahat during the first Settlement of 1878-80 and not because they were assessed to land revenue during the subsequent settlements.
(c)That the relevancy of entries of jamabandi for the year 1949-50 is only for the purposes of adjustment and not for the determination of shares in the shamlat which was to be done in accordance with the entries of the last Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22 with reference to assessment on khata chahat fixed during the first regular Settlement of 1878-80. It was also submitted that the cancellation or otherwise of Mutation No, 1733, was immaterial because the shares in shamlat were to be determined in any case according to the entry of the last Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22 and not on the basis of the entries of jamabandis of 1949-50.
8. Thus, the questions which have emerged for determination from these arguments are:-
(t) Whether the entry "hasab rasad khewat" as appearing in the Misl Haqiyat prepared in the First Regular Settlement of 1878-80 does in any way conflict with the entry "hasab rasad khewat jama bandobast qanuni" as appearing in the Misl Haqiyat prepared during the third Settlement of 1921- 22 and if so, with what effect; (ii)whether shamlat rights attached to a well assessed to land revenue during the First Regular Settlement of 1878-80 were to extinguish on that well-being subsequently fallen out of use, permanently or otherwise, and instead to accrue to a new well that had set at work during the currency of Settlement;
(iii) whether the regrant rights of the petitioners in the khata shamlat for the purposes of adjustment were to be determined on the basis of entries of jamabandi prepared in 1949-50 preceding the acquisition of their land by the Thal Development Authority or according to the entry "hasab" rasad khewat jama bandobast qanuni as recorded in the Misi Haqiyat of 1921-22.
9. Before we proceed to discuss these questions, it will be useful to have a look into the entries of various Mist Haqiyat prepared during the three Settlements of Muzaffargarh district as shown in the sub-joined statement. {{ARABIC TEXT}} ' To appreciate the true import of these entries the words "khewat", "rasad" and "jama" used therein need to be explained. In this connection, it may be observed that during the first regular Settlement of Muzaffargarh District the Financial Commissioner on the proposal submitted to him by the Settlement Commissioner and the Settlement Officer had decided in his letter No, 4773-1/2 dated 9th August, 1875, as referred to in para. 14 of Chapter VII of Mr. 0' Brien Settlement Report, that since the small area of each estate and their number made the formation of record very laborious, therefore, the papers of Muntakhab asamiwar and Naqsha chahat should be amalgamated into one to make the Muntakhab by well only. The words "Muntakhab" and "khewat" both denote "a list of the landowners". Therefore, in the Misl Haqiyat of 1878-80, the word "khewat" would mean and include khata chahat. As for the word "rasad" (.41) it has been described in the Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms compiled by H. H. Willson (published in 1855), as "a store of grain provided for, or sent to, an army; in Bengal and Hindustan the word was early applied to a progressive increase of revenue settlement-Reg. Viii. 1793, section 71; but it also denotes a progressive diminution, and likewise implies the amount of increase or deduction; in Maratha it denoted money paid into the public treasury by the native collectors as the amount of their collection". It would thus appear that both in the Northern Provinces and Maratha territories, the word "rasad" was mainly used to denote the revenue demand/assessm ent. The word was later adopted with the same connotation by those who carried out early Settlements in the United Provinces. As our system in the Punjab had been borrowed from the United Provinces, therefore, the same terminology had found its way into the record prepared by our Settlement Officers. Similarly the word "Jama" has been defined in Douie's Settlement Manual to mean "land-revenue demand (assessment)".
10. Thus in view of the construction as placed on these words, the phrase "hasab rasad khewat" would conveniently be translated as "according to measure of revenue demand payable on holdings attached to each well". In a similar case of Jhang district reported as Mitha and others v.
Ghulam Hussain and others (1), their Lordships Muhammad Sharif and Cornelius, JJ while deciding the question of ownership of Shamlat construed the phrase "hasab rasad khewat chahat" to mean "according to measure of revenue-paying cultivated land attached to each well". As for words "jama bandobast qanuni" appearing in the later Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22 they were added by way of explanation to the phrase used in the earlier Misl Haqiyat prepared during the 1st regular Settlement which was called as "bandobast qanuni" because it had finally determined the rights held in land by various classes of landowners. The intention to add these words was to make the phrase more intelligible and to spell out the true import of the entry of the earlier Misl Haqiyat and not to clothe it with any meaning other than what had been assigned to it originally at the Settlement by the framers of the records. Thus, the revised entry in Misl Haqiyat of 1921-22, namely, Shamlat deli Malikan Adna hasab rasad khewat jama bandobast qanuni would simply mean that the village Shamlat was to be shared by Adna Malikan according to the measure of assessment fixed on cultivated holding on each well at the Settlement of 1878-80. This seems to be perfectly in accord with the entry of Mis! Haqiyat of 1878-80 and does by no means conflict with it. The controversy about inter se inconsistency of these entries seems to have arisen from misconstruction of the term `rasad' to mean "a share, portion" and the phrase "hasab rasad khewat" as "according to the share in the khata" in which sense they were never used in the revenue records.
11. Assuming, however, that the addition of word "jama" to the later Mis! Haqiyat of 1921-22 has resulted into a revision of the entry in earlier (I) PLD 1949 Lah. 86 Misl Haqiyat of 1878-80, then the natural presumption would be that it has been done deliberately and with due cause in accordance with the provisions of section 37 of the Land Revenue Act, 1887 (section 45 of the Act, 1967), and the procedure laid down in para 296-A of the Settlement Manual and that it has superseded the old entry. The presumption of correctness that attaches to revenue record must attach to the later records I preference to the earlier one under section 44 of the Land Revenue Act, 1887, (corresponding section 52 of Act, 1967). The later Settlements were carried out more carefully than the earlier and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary it must be held that a change in the revenue record was no made without any good reason, especially if the change has survived over a long period of years as in the instant case.
12. The contention that on breaking down or disuse of wells which were at work at settlement before its period had expired were exempted from assessment and the new wells which were construed during the currency of settlement were assessed to land revenue, has no substance. It will be seen that during the first regular Settlement of three southern tehsils of Muzaffargarh district including Sanawan (Kot Adu) as it was then called, the method of assessment was by imposition of a fixed demand on all holdings not subject to rive rain action and in the rive rain estates by imposition of a fluctuating assessm ent by soil rates. In the assessment circle of Thal Chahi in which Patti Sultan Mahmood was included the same system of fixed " assessment was enforced by which all owners were jointly and severally responsible for the payment of revenue of the entire estate and if any landowner abandoned his land on account of his well having fallen out of use, the whole body of landowners of that estate was to pay the revenue assessed upon it, in view of section 61 of the Land Revenue Act, 1887 (section 74 of Act, 1967). There is no doubt that in such eventuality the Collector had the power under section 56 to redistribute the assessment over the land for which new wells were sunk during the currency of settlement, but as it would appear from para. 438 of the Settlement Manual, this remedy had been rarely, if ever, applied. It was only during the second Settlement carried out by Pandat Hari Kishan Kaul in 1900-2 that a system of elastic assessment was adopted for Thal and remission granted to the lands on wells fallen out of use and where new wells had been sunk after the previous Settlement, protective leases were given exempting them from all assessm ent for 20 years. Thus, when a well was at work, it would pay its full assessment, and when not, not. In the same way when a holding on the well was abandoned, its revenue would be remitted. Similarly, when as old well was brought into work again, or an old holding was again cultivated, the assessm ent fixed by the Settlement Officer would come automatically into play (Assessm ent) report of 1900-paras. 101-105 of the Report of the Settlement Officer and paras. 43-44 of that of the Settlement Commissioner refer).
13. It would thus be clear from the above that during the term of first Regular Settlement of 1878-80 there was no system of granting any remission from assessment on wells falling out of use nor there was any instance in which such assessment was redistributed over the holdings of the wells constructed after 1880, during the currency of Settlement. Reference in this regard is also invited to PLD 1950 Ph (Rev.) 1068 wherein it has been held that the land which has ceased to be agricultural is not ipso facto excluded from payment of land revenue. Therefore, the contention of the petitioner that their wells which started working after 1884, were assessed to land revenue in place of the respondents' wells which had permanently fallen out of use, was not correct, nor it could be said that the rights of the respondents as to their shares in shamlat had extinguished on the disuse of their wells and instead such rights had accrued to the petitioners o account of any imposition of assessm ent on their wells. The instance quote in this regard of Mutation No, 227 dated 13-12-1896 omitting to mention the transfer of share in the shamlat along with the land sold, does by no mea give rise to an inference that since Sheikhuwala well to which that land was attached, had ceased to work, therefore, the owners' rights of shamlat attached thereto had extinguished. It may be noticed that the rights of shamlat were created by the operation of first regular Settlement and could not be taken away subsequently except by consent of or in consequence of a decree or order binding on the parties after making entries in the record-of-rights in accordance with section 37 of Land Revenue Act, 1887 (section 45 of Act, 1967). Likewise the reference to mutations which had been sanctioned during the term of second regular Settlement starting from 1901-02 is not relevant.
14. Here it may also be pointed out that at the time of sanctioning a mutation, the field staff used to prepare a "Goshwara" showing the distribution of area of shamlat in the following form-
(a) previously transferred,
(b) being transferred at present,
(c) balance still remains to be transferred.
' If the assessm ent of 1878-80 had not been the basis of distribution of shamlat khata, then there would have been no need to prepare such "Goshawara" at the time of attestation of each mutation.
15. As regards the entries of jamabandi for 1949-50 the same would no doubt be kept in view for the purposes of adjustment but so far as the determination of the rights of owners as to their share in the shamlat was concerned, it had to be done with reference to the entries of last "Misl Haqiyat" prepared in 1921-22 whereby shamlat was to be shared only by those owners whose wells were assessed to land revenue during the first regular Settlement of 1878-80 i. e. In accordance with "hisa hasab rasad khewat jama bandobast qanuni".
16. In view of what has been stated above, I hold that the land held by the petitioners in the khata Chahat being not assessed to land revenue during the first regular Settlement of 1878-80, they were not entitled to the grant of any share in the shamlat and therefore have rightly been refused adjustment of such land in their favour by the Collector and the Additional Commissioner. The revision petition thus fails and is rejected accordingly. Parties are left to bear their own costs.
' The order was reserved in this case. It may be communicated to the parties immediately. Revision .