ZAFFAR HUSSAIN MIRZA, J.-- This appeal by special leave is directed against the judgment of a Division Bench of the Sind High Court, dated 18-2-1977 whereby the Letters Patent Appeal filed by the appellant against the judgment of a learned single Judge of that Court in a Constitutional Petition was dismissed.
2. The facts of the case briefly are that the predecessors of respondents Nos. 2 to 13, who will be referred to as the respondents for the sake of convenience hereinafter, had migrated from East Punjab and were provisionally allotted land in village Jhabooka Tehsil Okara District Montgomery (now Sahiwal). As the respondents had settled in District Sanghar in the Sind Province and had obtained temporary allotment of lands there, they applied for the transfer of their claims from Montgomery to village Shahpur Chakar, Tehsil Shahdadpur, District Sanghar in accordance with the policy of the Government. Their request was allegedly allowed and their allotment in Montgomery District was accordingly cancelled and their claim forms forwarded to the Deputy Commissioner, Sanghar vide order No. 10483-56-1175/11 (G) passed by the Member Board of Revenue and Rehabilitation Commissioner West Pakistan, dated 11-3-1957. In pursuance of the said order they were allotted 23 Scres and 9 Ghuntas of agricultural land in deh Shahpur Chakar and 24 Acres and 2 Ghuntas in Deh Chamrao as a result of a further order passed by Mr. Anver Adil, Rehabilitation Commissioner, Hyderabad and Khairpur Division, Hyderabad, dated 18-6-1958. It seems that the lands so allotted to the respondents were already provisionally transferred to the father of appellant Abdul Ghafar Khan and, therefore, he sought to challenge the transfer in favour of the respondents in Writ Petition No. 368 of 1968 but the same was dismissed as having become infructuous on account of the failure of a request made by the writ petitioner to amend the petition.
However, the appellant persisted in his efforts to challenge the transfer of the disputed land in favour of the respondents and on his representation the Chief Settlement Commissioner referred the question of allotment of lands to the respondents in Sanghar District to his delegatee, Mr. Muhammad Hasan, Deputy Settlement Commissioner for inquiry and action under section 11 of the Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958. The main question to be enquired into was whether the respondents had manipulated transfer of claims and cancellation of confirmed allotments by suppression of facts. The learned Settlement Commissioner after recording the evidence produced by the concerned parties held that the alleged order of the Rehabilitation Commissioner, West Pakistan, dated 11-3-1957, was a forged document having been secured through under hand means by the respondents and that no such order transferring the claims of the respondents to District Sanghar "was ever issued by the Rehabilitation Commissioner". In view of this finding the said officer, exercising the powers of the Chief Settlement Commissioner under sections 10 and 11 of the said Act, ordered the cancellation of the allotments confirmed in the names of the respondents in Sanghar District forthwith and for the re-transfer of their claims back to Deputy Settlement Commissioner, Montgomery.
3. The respondents feeling aggrieved by the aforesaid order of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner challenged the same in Constitutional Petition No. 456 of 1965, which was allowed by a learned single Judge of the erstwhile High Court of Sind and Baluchistan on 15-6-1971. Against the said judgment the appellant Abdul Ghaffar preferred a Letters Patent Appeal which was dismissed as per the impugned judgment in this appeal.
4. The learned Judges of this Court who heard the petition for leave to appeal observed that the main ground on which the learned Judges of the Division Bench of the High Court based their decision was that the original letter of the Rehabilitation Commissioner, dated 11-3-1957, copy of which was endorsed to the respondents, was produced by them before the Court, on which the learned Judges held that the same bore the signatures of Mr. S.A. Latif, Deputy Secretary, Board of Revenue, which according to them was a proof of its genuineness. Leave was, therefore, granted to examine the question whether the High Court could lawfully entertain new evidence produced for the first the before it to invalidate the order of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner before whom this evidence was not produced (and indeed not even before the learned single Judge of the High Court). The further question that was found to require consideration was whether, in view of the rule laid down by this Court in Begum B. H . Sayed's case PLD 1970 SC 29 the High Court could determine the case of the parties itself even if it was not satisfied with the findings of the departmental authority.
5. As observed in the impugned judgment in this appeal the Deputy Settlement Commissioner gave his finding that the letter, dated 11-3-1957 upon which the transfer of the claim forms of the respondents was founded was forged proceeded on the basis of to considerations, namely, (i) that the respondents had failed to produce that copy of the said letter which was alleged to have been forwarded to them, and (ii) that no copy of the said letter or papers in connection therewith were traceable in the office of the Chief Settlement Commissioner. The learned single Judge on examining the record took the contrary view after taking into consideration three pieces of evidence. Firstly, there was a certificate from the Deputy Settlement Commissioner and Additional Settlement Commissioner (Land) Sanghar, dated 9-8-1965, to the effect that the copy of the letter of the Rehabilitation Commissioner in question had in fact been received in Sanghar and was entered at serial No. 636 of the register maintained in the office on 19-3-1967. In the second place the learned Judge took into consideration an affidavit of Rana Muhammad Arshad Khan, Advocate, Montgomery, to the effect that he had examined the file of the transfer of claim forms of the respondents, from Okara to Sanghar and had found the letter from the Board of Revenue relating to transfer of the claim forms belonging to the respondents to Sanghar. The last piece of evidence on which the learned single Judge relied was the fact that the respondents had been making applications since 1952 to the Rehabilitation Authority for the transfer of their claims to Sanghar.
6. Before the Division Bench of the High Court the learned counsel appearing for the parties had conceded that the main issue in the controversy was whether the letter, dated 11-3-1957, purporting to have been issued from the Board of Revenue regarding the transfer of the claims was a forgery or a genuine document. It was further conceded that if this letter was found to be a genuine document, then the transfer of the respondents, claims from Montgomery to Sanghar was not open to challenge and the allotment of land made to them in Sanghar could not be legitimately cancelled. In view of these concessions the sole question examined by the learned Judges of the Division Bench related to the genuineness or otherwise of the letter, dated 11-3-1957. Before the learned Judges of the Division Bench the original copy of the said letter forwarded to the respondents through respondent No. 2 herein, was produced which purported to bear the signatures of Mr. S.A. Latif, who was then admittedly the Deputy Secretary, Board of Revenue, dealing with settlement matters. This letter having been taken into consideration, it was vehemently urged by Mr. Khalid Ishaque that this document not having been produced during the inquiry before the Deputy Settlement Commissioner, the learned Judges were not justified to take it into consideration and decide the case afresh as that amounts to substituting the finding of the lower Tribunal on a question of fact. Support was sought in aid of this argument from a decision of this Court in Begum B.H. Sayed v. Mst. Afzal Jahan Begum PLD 1970 SC 29. Learned counsel submitted that on the principles stated in that decision the case should have been remanded to the competent Settlement Authority for a fresh decision after taking into consideration the new evidence produced by the parties.
7. After hearing the learned counsel at length we are, however, unable to find force in the contentions advanced in support of this appeal. The perusal of the impugned judgment shows that the learned Judges did not base their conclusion that there was no evidence to support a finding of forgery with regard to the letter, dated 11-3-1957, solely upon the new document placed before them. They agreed with the view taken by the learned single Judge that the mere absence of this letter from the official records would not necessarily lead to the inference that it was a forgery.
Additionally since the letter in question bore outward number, it would have been easy to conclusively determine whether the letter was a forgery by examining the outward register of the Chief Settlement Commissioner or the Board of Revenue. If the letter in its present form was a forgery and in fact another letter of a different purport was issued under that number, then to the production of such letter would have clinched the issue. None of these courses was adopted by the inquiry officer. It was further pointed out that the respondents had made a categorical assertion in their Writ Petition that during the proceedings of the inquiry the original letter (which was subsequently produced before the Division Bench) was shown to the inquiry officer. Above all the most relevant consideration ignored by the inquiry officer, as pointed out by the learned Judges, was .a reference made to the disputed letter by Mr. Anwer Adil, Rehabilitation Commissioner, Hyderabad and Khairpur Divisions in his order, dated 18-6-1958. It was argued that this reference by itself is of no material assistance to the case of the respondents inasmuch as, only a copy may have been produced before Mr. Anver Adil. But this submission is untenable in view of the general presumption of regularity attaching to all official acts and, therefore, ordinarily the said officer must have acted upon a proper and genuine document having official authenticity. Further circumstances appearing on the record before the Deputy Settlement Commissioner were also referred to by the learned Judges of the Division Bench and the final conclusion was expressed in the following words:- "In view of the above circumstances, even if we were to exclude from consideration the to pieces of evidence relied upon by the learned single Judge in support of his finding that the letter of 11-3- 1957 is not a forgery, namely, the certificate from the Deputy Commissioner and Additional Settlement Commissioner, Sanghar, to the effect that letter of 11-3-1957 had in fact been received by his office, and the affidavit of Rana Muhammad Arshad Khan, Advocate, that he had found in file No.2 relating to transfer of claims from Montgomery to Sanghar, the letter, 11-3-1957, on the ground that such evidence should not have been received in writ proceeding not acted upon, we are of the respectful view that there was no evidence before the learned Deputy Settlement Commissioner on which he could come to the conclusion that the impugned letter, dated 11-3-1957, was a forgery. His finding on this point, in our view, is based not on tangible evidence but on mere surmises".
Having regard to all these circumstances we cannot subscribe to the submission that the learned Judges of the High Court have substituted their own findings arrived at on the basis of new evidence, for the finding reached by the departmental forum but manifestly they have set aside the impugned order before them as there was no evidence to B support the conclusion that the basic order contained in the letter, dated 11-3-1957 was forgery. In the writ jurisdiction the High Court was quite competent to do so as laid down in Nawaz v. Additional Settlement and Rehabilitation Commissioner PLD 1970 SC 39 in which it was postulated by this Court that finding of fact given by a subordinate Court or a Tribunal or other Authority can be interfered with if the finding is based on no evidence or is based on a complete misreading of the evidence. The case of Begum B.H. Sayed on which reliance has been placed by the learned counsel for the appellant is clearly distinguishable on facts and is otherwise not relevant in the facts of the present case.
8. For all the foregoing reasons, there is no merit in this appeal which is accordingly dismissed with no order as to costs.