Shivbarat And Ors vs Bhuvneshwar And Ors

Prashant Kumar Mishra, J

The dispute emanating from the impugned order passed by the Board of Revenue, which in turn was based on the Subordinate Revenue Court's

order under Section 178 of Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code, 1959 (for short 'the Code, 1959') concerns partition of a joint family property between

the members of the joint family.

Admittedly, petitioners approached the Tahsildar under Section 178 of the Code, 1959 with a prayer to mutate their name on the basis of previous

partition. The language of Section 178 makes it explicit that the Revenue Court has original jurisdiction to effect a partition and not to mutate the name

of various shareholders on the basis of previous partition. For recording name of the shareholders who were allotted share in any previous partition

without intervention of the Court, the appropriate remedy lies for the parties to move before the Civil Court, wherein the issue as to existence of a

previous partition would be determined by the Civil Court based on evidence, both oral and documentary, led by the parties.

Without interfering with the order passed by the Revenue Courts and without commenting anything on the merits of the matter, I deem it

appropriate to dispose of the writ petition with liberty to the petitioner to approach the jurisdictional Civil Court for a decree that the joint family land

has already been partitioned with further prayer to record their name on the basis of subject partition and for separate possession. Let the suit be

preferred within a period of 3 months from today. For a period of 3 months only, the parties shall maintain status-quo in respect of their possession

over the joint family property. In the meanwhile, on petitioners moving any application for grant of temporary injunction, the Trial Court shall decide

the same on its own merits, without being influenced by the order of status-quo passed in this writ petition.