1. M. R. KHAN, J.-This appeal, by special leave, is directed against the order of a Division Bench of the former High Court of West Pakistan, Lahore, by which the appellants' Writ Petition No. 509 of 1963 was dismissed in limine.
2. The subject-matters of the said writ petition were 290 kanals of agricultural lands in village Tootwala, Tehsil and District Montgomery, recorded in Khata No. 1, Khatauni Nos. 732 to 736, 743, 747 to 750, 752 to 756, 764, 766 and 773 to 775 as per jamabandi of 1942-43 and 28 kanals of agricultural lands in village Chak Noor Shah, Tehsil and District Montgomery, recorded in Khata No. 1, Khatauni Nos. 58 to 62 as per jamabandi of 1945-46. These lands shall hereinafter be called the `disputed lands'.
3. The facts of the case, as it appears from the writ petition and the other materials placed on record by the appellants, were as follows :- The disputed lands were tenanted lands, and the appellants were the landlords in respect thereof.
4. All the tenants concerned were non-Muslims. On the 28th May 1948, the appellants made three applications under section 8 of the West Punjab Protection of Evacuee Property Act, 1948. Two of these applications related to the appellants' lands in the villages Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala, and the third application related to their lands in village Nur Shah. These applications were made for a declara--tion that the non-Muslim tenants, who had been holding the lands in occupancy right, having left Pakistan, their occupancy tenancies were abandoned and the tenants had therefore no right in the lands. In other words, the prayer made in the said three applica--tions was one for a declaration that the disputed, lands and the tenanted lands of village Nur Shah of which the appellants are owners, were not evacuee property. These applications were dismissed by the Deputy Custodian, by his order, dated the 1st January 1950. On appeal, this order dismissing the said applica--tions was affirmed by the Custodian on the 20th May 1950. About six years thereafter, that is, sometime in the year 1956, the present appellants filed three fresh applications under section 18 of the Pakistan (Administration of Evacuee Property) Ordinance, 1949 (Ordinance No. XV of 1949) in respect of the above and some other lands of the said three villages for a declaration that these were non-evacuee property. It was con--tended in the said applications that the non- Muslim occupancy tenants having been killed, the lands could not be treated as evacuee- property. These three applications were also dismissed by the Deputy Custodian on the 19th April 1958, on the ground that the tenancies in respect of the lands having been admitted in the applications to be occupancy tenancies, the same were not extinguished and the tenancy rights vested in the Custodian. An appeal was taken against the Deputy Custodian's order, dated the 19th April 1958. This appeal was accepted by the Additional Custodian, vide his order, dated the 18th November 1959. In the course of the hearing of the appeal, it was contended on behalf of the appellants that the status of the tenancies was wrongly stated in the applications to be occupancy tenancies. A prayer was accordingly made for amendment of those applica--tions. This prayer was allowed by the Additional Custodian, and the case was remanded to the Deputy Custodian.
5. After the order of remand, the present appellants filed as many as 14 fresh applications under section 22 of the Pakistan (Administration of Evacuee Property) Act, 1957 (Act XII of 1957) sometime in the year 1960. Fourteen separate cases were started on the said applications out of which Cases Nos. 9 and 11 related to the appellants' lands in village Chak Noor Shah and Cases Nos. 5, 13 and 15 related to the lands in village Tootwala. The Deputy Custodian, by his orders, dated the 30th June 1961, dismissed all these cases. The present appellants then preferred 14 Appeals Nos. 78 to 91 of 1962 against the Deputy Custodian's orders, dated the 30th June 1961, out of which Appeals Nos. 78, 84 and 85 of 1962 were dismissed for non-prosecution and the remaining appeals were dismissed by the Custodian on the 31st October 1962, mainly on the ground that the appellants' applications made in 1948 for declaring the lands to be non-evacuee property were dismissed by the Deputy Custodian and the order of dismissal was affirmed on appeal, but this fact was fraudulently suppressed in their fresh applications made in 1960 under section 22 of Act XII of 1957. The further ground for dismissing the appeals was that the lands in questio4 had already been allotted to refugees by the Rehabilitation Authorities, but the allottees were not impleaded in the applications and the appeals arising there--from. As the appeals were dismissed on these grounds, the Custodian did not consider them on merits. The present appellants then made the Writ Petition No. 509 of 1963, calling in question the validity of the order of the Custodian, dated the 31st October 1962, dismissing their appeals relating only to the lands in villages Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala.
6. The learned Judges of the High Court dismissed the writ petition in limine mainly on the ground that "the delay in filing the applications until 1956 itself disentitled the present appellants from obtaining a declaration that on account of exodus of the non-Muslims tenants, their rights had been expropriated and they were disentitled to re--enter the lands". The learned Judges also took the view that the tenancy rights of the evacuee tenants, in view of specific provisions in all the evacuee laws, remained unaffected by their exodus. Non---joinder of the allottees in the writ petition also weighed with them.
7. The main ground on which the Custodian dismissed the appellants' appeals was, in his own words, as follows :- "I am dismissing all these appeals without hearing the learned counsel of the appellants on merits, because in my opinion the appellants by concealing the fact that their earlier applications had been dismissed by the Deputy Custodian of Evacuee Property, and that their appeals had been dismissed by the Custodian of Evacuee Property, have tried to practice fraud by filing these fresh applications in the year 1960."
8. The question is whether there was any real basis for the Custodian's taking the above view. The appellants admitted in the writ petition that on the 28th May 1948, they had made three applications under section 8 of the West Punjab Protection of Evacuee Property Act, 1948 for declaring their lands in the villages Chak Noor Shah, Tootwala and Nur Shah as non-evacuee property. The lands in the villages Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala were described at the beginning of the writ petition with reference to the numbers of their khatas and khataunis. The said three applications of the 28th May 1948, were admittedly dismissed and the appeals arising therefrom were also dismissed. The appellants further admitted that sometime in 1956 they filed three other applications for the same relief under section 18 of the Pakistan (Administration of Evacuee Property) Ordinance, 1949 (Ordinance No. XV of 1949). This was admitted in the writ petition in the following words :- "That in 1956, petitioners filed three applications before the Deputy Custodian, Evacuee Property, Montgomery, under section 18 of Act XV of 1949 (Act XV of 1949 is a mistake for Ordinance No. 15 of 1949) in respect of the above and other lands situated in the three villages Mouza Noor Shah, Chak Noor Shah and Monza Tootwala." , The words "in respect of the above and other lands" occurring in the, said quotation are significant.
9. They clearly referred to lands which included the lands of villages Chak Noor Shah and Mauza Tootwala, that is, the disputed lands as described in the earlier part of the writ petition. 7 he further admission in the writ petition was that the applications filed by the appellants before the Custodian in the year 1960 under section 22 of Act XII of 1957 included, among others, the disputed lands. Thus on the appellants' own admission, the lands of the villages Chab Noor Shah and Tootwula as described irk the writ petition and which were also the subject-matters of the appeals before the Custodian, had been involved in their applications made on the 28th May 1948. In fact, it was not the appellants' case in the writ petition that the lands covered by their applications made on the 28th May 1948, appertaining to the villages Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala were different from the lands involved in the appeals before the Custodian. What, however, was made out in the writ petition was that in the applications filed in 1948, the tenancies were occupancy tenancies, whereas the tenancies involved in the relevant appeals before the Custodian were non--- occupancy tenancies. This means that while the lands involved in the applications made in the year 1948 and the appeals before the Custodian were the same, the status of the tenancies con-- cerned was different. This is evident from the following ground taken in the writ petition :- "That the applications filed in 1948 related to the occupancy tenancies and were based on the ground that the abandonment had taken place by the non-Muslim occupancy tenants while 7 out of the 14 applications filed later on were related to the non-occupancy tenancies and possession of which had passed to the petitioners long before 1947."
10. Thus it is abundantly clear that the lands of village Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala which had been the subject-matters of the applications made in 1948 were also the subject-matters of the appeals before the Custodian. The appellants did not file in the High Court any of their applications successively made by them in the years 1948, 1956 and 1960 for the same relief. It was only at a late stage that a certified copy of an application relating to certain lands of village Chak Noor Shah was produced in this Court. This application related to as much as 1221 kanals 18 marlas of lands of village Cbak Noor Shah, whereas the appellants' writ petition related to only 28 kanals of lands of that village. Moreover, the khataunis of these lands are different. Thus it appears that the lands mentioned in the said certified copy and the lands of village Chak Noor Shah as stated in the, writ petition are different. But it does not necessarily follow there from that the appellants did not make any application in the year 1948 for declaring 28 kanals of lands of village Chak Noor Shah as non- evacuee property. It has been the consistent case of the appellants that they had applied in the year 1948 for declaring 28 kanals of lands of village Chak Noor Shah as non---evacuee property.
11. This was the appellants' positive case in the writ petition and the petition for special leave. Hence, the certified copy of the application filed in this Court has no bearing on the present case. It might be that the appellants had made another separate application in the year 1948 in respect of entirely different lands of Chak Noor Shah measuring as much as 1221 kanals 18 marlas.
12. In their writ petition, the appellants took the stand that they did not suppress the filing of the applications in 1948 and the dismissal of those applications inasmuch as the tenancies shown therein were occupancy tenancies, whereas the tenancies stated in the applications of the year 1960 which give rise to the appeals before the Custodian, related to non-occupancy tenancies. This contention is of no substance. When the applications of 1948 as also the applications of 1960 related to the same lands, the appellants should have stated in the latter applications that their earlier applications of 1948 had been dismissed and the order of dismissal had been maintained on appeal. The mere fact that the status of the tenancies was alleged to be non-occupancy tenancies in the appellants' subsequent applications of the year 1960 did not alter the lands which were the same in all the applications. The learned Custodian was therefore right in taking the view that the appellants tried to practise fraud by filing fresh applications in the year 1960 by suppressing the dismissal of the earlier applications made in 1948. It is an accepted principle that no person is entitled to any assistance from a Court or tribunal unless he comes with clean hands.
13. The learned Judges of the High Court found that the appellants were not entitled to any relief because of the inordinate delay they made in filing the applications in 1960. It is, therefore, to be considered if this view of the learned Judges is correct: It is admitted that sometime in the year 1956 the appellants made three applications under section 18 of the Ordinance No. XV of 1949 for the same relief in respect of the same lands. Two of these applications admittedly related to the lands of villages Chak Noor Shah and Tootwala, that is, the subject-matters of the writ petition.
14. These applications were admittedly dismissed by the Deputy Custodian on the 19th April 1958. It was the appellants' case that, on -appeal, the Additional Custodian remanded the case to the Deputy Custodian and permitted the appellants to amend their applications by changing the status of the tenancies from occupancy to non-occupancy. After the remand, the appel--lants, instead of taking steps for amending the applications made in the year 1956, filed fresh applications sometime in 1960 under section 22 of the Pakistan (Administration of Evacuee Property) Act, 1957 (Act No. XII of 1957), for the same relief in respect of the same lands. The disputed lands, as contended by the learned counsel representing the Rehabilitation Authority (respondent No. 2), had been allotted to a number of refugees sometime in the year 1948. The learned counsel, in fact, pro--duced some official records to show that the allotments had been made to the refugees in 1948. The prescribed period for making an application for declaring a property to be a non-evacuee property is 60 days from the date of treating the property as evacuee property. As the disputed lands had been treated to be evacuee property in the year 1948, the applications made in 1960, out of which the appeals before the Custodian arose, were clearly barred by time. The learned Judges of the High Court were, therefore, right in holding that the appellants were not entitled to any relief on the ground of inordinate delay. Thus the appeal is liable to be dismissed and the appellants are not entitled to any relief in any case. Hence, it is not necessary to consider the other two points, namely, whether there was inordinate delay in filing the writ petition itself and whether the non joinder of the allottees was a fatal defect.
15. In the result, I would dismiss the appeal. I would, however, leave the parties to bear their own costs.