Nagar Palika, Raisinghnagar v. Rameshwar Lal & Anr.
Background
Rameshwar Lal's grandfather, Pokhar Ram, had been granted a small (100x100 sq. ft.) plot of land in Raisinghnagar, Rajasthan by a 1957 resolution of the local municipal body (Nagar Palika), on payment of consideration, and built a hut there. After his death, the land passed down to his son and then to the respondent, Rameshwar Lal, who continued living on it. When the Nagar Palika began a drive to remove encroachers from municipal land, Rameshwar Lal feared he would be wrongly treated as an encroacher and filed a civil suit seeking a permanent injunction against being dispossessed, relying on his grandfather's original land grant (Patta).
Decision Breakdown
The trial court initially dismissed the suit, but the First Appellate Court reversed this and granted the injunction, a decision the Rajasthan High Court upheld in a second appeal. The Supreme Court held that where two courts below have made concurrent findings of fact that are not against the evidence, pleadings, or law, and are not perverse, such findings are ordinarily binding and will not be reopened on further appeal. The Nagar Palika had claimed the original land grant was cancelled and the land actually allotted was different land, but it had failed to prove either claim with evidence, even though the burden of proving these defences was on it. Finding that Rameshwar Lal had established a prima facie case, that the balance of convenience favoured him, and that he would suffer irreparable harm without the injunction, the Court held the lower courts were right to grant it, and dismissed the Nagar Palika's appeal.
Lesson Learnt
In disputes over long-standing land possession, once two courts below have made the same factual findings, a party challenging them in a further appeal must show those findings were legally unsustainable, not just re-argue the same facts, and a defendant who makes specific factual claims (like "the grant was cancelled") bears the burden of actually proving them with evidence, not merely asserting them.