This writ petition is directed against the order of an Additional Settlement Commissioner (Lands)/Chief Settlement Commissioner, Punjab at Gujranwala, dated 6-5-1978 purporting to cancel the land allotted in the name of Bhobat and mutated in the name of his alleged daughter Mst. Rasoolan.
2. Having gone through the record as well as the impugned order, it is apparent that the learned Notified Officer has given an unequivocal finding that both the sets of witnesses who appeared for the petitioner as well as the respondents were contradictory and destructive of each other's testimony and they were not worthy of credit. This means that there was no evidence for or against the application or the allegations being levelled therein. In such a situation, it is very difficult to appreciate how the Notified Officer could draw inferences when he is surely not receiving premonition. The further view of the Notified Officer that non-production of Mst. Rasoolan was a circumstance warranting adverse inference can also not be sustained because in the same breath he has held Ibrahim to be the husband of Mst. Rasoolan.
3. Even going by the views of the learned Notified Officer it behaved him to conduct an honest inquiry into the matter and maTce a visible effort to reach the truth. This incidence of condition and qualification is attached to exercise of all public powers when dealing with the' rights of citizens that the questions cannot be either left undecided or decided without evidence or a matter disposed of by mere conjectures and surmises. This is what appears to have been done in the facts ands circumstances of this case.
4.A further feature which has been brought to the notice of this Court at the hearing today is that while purporting to cancel the land from the same of Bhobat the land has been allotted to the clients of Haji A.R. Shaukat, Advocate when there is no finding in their favour to be either of informers or having pending claim or units and left matters to be decided subsequently. I am afraid, a Notified Officer is a persona designate and the moment he has disposed of an application which. Was pending immediately before the repeal of the Displaced Persons (Land Settlement) Act, 1958, he becomes funetus officio. This inference will also follow from a plain reading of section 2 of Act XIV of 1975 which ordains that the matters which were pending before the repeal of the Act shall be disposed of finally. A piecemeal disposal is otherwise unwarranted in law.
5. Nothing said by me in this order is to be construed to be prejudicial to either party because this case warrants that the impugned order for the faults listed above ought to be set aside and the case remanded to the learned Member, Board of Revenue (Settlement and Rehabilitation Wing), Punjab, Lahore for fresh disposal by a Notified Officer after due application of his mind to all the material facts and circumstances of the case and giving the parties a fair opportunity to prove their respective contentions. Order accordingly. In the circumstances of the case there will be no order as to costs.