1. S. A. RAHMAN, J.-By this petition for special leave to appeal Yousaf Ali seeks to ventilate his grievance against the order of the High Court of West Pakistan by which his prayer, for being impleaded as a party to writ proceedings pending in the High Court, was rejected.
2. The petitioner is a local in possession of a shop in a composite building. There are apparently four shops in this, which has a residential portion above the shops. The Deputy Settlement Commissioner divided the property into two independent units and transferred one of those units, consisting of a residential portion and two shops, including the one in the possession of the petitioner, to the first respondent, Fazal Mohammad Malik. The second respondent Mst. Sughra Asghar laid a complaint before the enforcement staff, that the transfer in favour of the first respondent was irregular. On a report of the enforcement staff, the Settlement and Rehabilitation Commissioner directed, by his order dated the 26th January 1963, that the shop in the possession of the petitioner, along with the flat above, should be transferred to the informant Mst. Sughra Asghar, as a separate unit, on the ground that the first respondent could not have been given two shops. In none of these proceedings did the petitioner figure as a party, for the simple reason that he, being a local, was not entitled to the transfer of the shop in his possession till 1966, when the law was amended in the sense that even a local could have a shop, in his possession, transferred to him, provided it was still available. The first respondent had challenged the order of the Settlement and Rehabilitation Commissioner, by a petition for a writ in the High Court in which he impleaded Mst. Sughra Asghar as the respondent. On the 10th May 1967 the petitioner applied in the high Court to be impleaded as a party. His request was turned down on the ground that he was not a party before the Settlement Authorities, in the dispute pending for adjudication in the High Court.
3. Mr. Mohammad Ismail, on behalf of the petitioner has argued before us that the petitioner was very much interested in the dispute pending in the High Court, on the ground that his client had submitted an L. S. Form for transfer of the shop in question, to the departmental authorities, on the 20th October 1966 and that the Form was still pending with the Department. It seems however, correct that believed, not a party before the Settlement Authorities in the dispute which was eventually taken to the High Court, he has no right to be impleaded in those proceedings in the High Court. If the High Court, in the end, decides to send back the case for re-decision to .The departmental authorities, the petitioner may possibly be able to contend before those authorities that his form should also receive consideration. But until such an event materializes, we do not see how the petitioner can be said to be a party interested in the litigation in the High Court. That litigation is confined to the determination of the question whether the informant, namely the second respondent Mst. Sughra Asghar, was correctly transferred the property in dispute or it should have remained with Fazal Mohammad Malik, the first respondent.
4. Learned counsel drew our attention to the fact that Civil Petition No. 349 of 1967 had been admitted by this Court on the 12th October 1967 and according to learned counsel, this involved a question similar to the one raised here. We find however, that in that case there was a distinguishing feature, in so far as the petitioner there had been allowed to file a Letters Patent Appeal from an order of the Single Bench, but eventually, on merits, the appeal was dismissed. The petitioner in that case had therefore, come up for special leave from the order of the High Court. This feature is absent in the present case No case for grant of special leave to appeal has been made out and we dismiss the petition.