The central legal point established in the judgment is that occupancy rights under the inams abolition act can only be claimed for agricultural lands and by tenants personally cultivating the land.

( 1 ) THE present writ petition has been filed for quashing of the Order dated 23-7-1988 (annexure-a) passed by the respondent land tribunal, arasikere taluk, rejecting the application filed by the predecessor-in-title of the petitioners for grant of occupancy rights in respect of vacant site measuring east to westfeet and north to southfeet, situate at arasikere town limits under the provisions of the Karnataka (religious and charitable) inams abolition act, 1955 (in short the 'act') as also the Order dated 23-3-1991 (annexure-c) passed by the civil judge dismissing the petition filed by the predecessor-in-title of the petitioners.

( 2 ) THE foundational facts are not in dispute. The petitioners claims to be in occupation of the site in question, which originally belonged to malikali tirupathi Sri venkataramanaswamy temple. Admittedly, the said site was given to one late Sri m. r. puttaswamaiah, whose legal heirs are petitioners herein, on 30 years' lease by the deputy commissioner, hassan, under the lease agreement dated 1-4-1958 for commercial purposes. During the currency of the said lease period, it was again extended for a further period of 10 years pursuant to the Order dated 20-1-1965. Accordingly, the lessee constructed a cinema theatre, hotel and shops thereon.

( 3 ) AFTER coming into force of the act, sons of late Mr. M. r. puttaswamaiah, namely Sri m. p. jayaram and Sri m. p. basavaraju filed application on 29-6-1987 before the land tribunal, arasikere, claiming occupancy rights in respect of the commercial site in question. The said application came to be rejected by the tribunal on 23-7-1988 primarily on the grounds that (i) the site in question was not a inam property since it was not mentioned so either in the quit rent register or register for inams, and (ii) it was not an agricultural land and as such the provisions of the ACT had no application. The said Order was challenged by the claimants by filing an appeal before the appellate authority as constituted under Section 116-a of the Karnataka land reforms act, 1961 which was made applicable to the proceedings under the ACT as well. The said appeal was No. Lraa (ra ). 71/88 but since there was difference of opinion between the members of the land tribunal as is evident from the Order dated 5-4-1990 (annexure-b), therefore as required under Section 116-b of the land reforms act, the members formulated the points on which there was a difference and referred the same to the jurisdictional civil judge under their Order dated 29-5-1990 (annexure-c ). But before the learned civil judge could hear the contesting parties on the points and record his opinion, by the Karnataka land reforms (Amendment) act, 1990, sections 116-a and 116-b referred to above, were deleted making the following provisions with regard to the pending proceedings:

( 4 ) AS is evident from Section 116-b, not with standing the making of reference of civil judge on certain issues, the appeal was to remain pending with the appellate' authority only. Therefore, keeping in view the provisions of Section 17, the rendering of opinion by the learned civil judge would have been futile since no Order could have been passed by the appellate authority on the basis of the said opinion. As such the learned civil judge under his Order dated 21-3-1991 rightly treated the proceedings before him as closed.

( 5 ) KEEPING in view the closure of the proceedings before the learned civil judge and the provisions contained in Section 17 of the Karnataka ACT 18 of 1990 extracted above. The remedy of the petitioner was to file an application before this court within the prescribed period for treating the said appeal as a writ petition for dismissal thereof in accordance with law. But the petitioner instead of adopting the said course was advised to file the present writ petition, challenging the Order of the civil judge on the ground that once a reference was made, he was under statutory duty to answer th