Point of law: Compromise decree - no legally enforceable agreement i.e., compromise on which a decree could have been founded; now that, the decree is voided by the court below and consequently suit is restored to the Board; parties can put forth their version by cogent evidence

ORDER :

1. There was a partition suit in O.S.No.114/1990; it was filed inter alia by the petitioners & three others against the respondents 1 & 2 herein; all the parties happen to be the children of one late Puttappa; however, 5th Plaintiff Smt.Nanjamma was his widow; properties comprised in the suit apparently are huge and several; suit was resisted by filing the Written Statements; this suit came to be decreed on 25.01.1995 in terms of evenly dated Compromise Petition; the said decree having been vacated on the ground of fraud & mispresentation in terms of 1st respondent-Mr.Nanjappa’s Misc. Case No.9/2009 decided on 27.11.2019, this writ petition is filed for laying a challenge thereto.

2. After service of notice contesting respondents having entered appearance through their counsel resist the writ petition making submission in justification of the impugned order and the grounds on which it has been constructed. During the interregnum between making of the Compromise Decree and filing of the subject Misc. Case, there were certain other legal proceedings for voiding the said decree; however, they do not have much significance to the adjudication of this writ petition.

3. Having heard the learned counsel for the parties and having perused the petition papers, this Court declines to grant indulgence in the matter for the following reasons:

(a) The institution of the partition suit and resistance by the contesting defendants thereto upto a particular point of time & stage of the proceedings, is not in dispute; it is also not in dispute that a Panchayat was convened in the village under the leadership of one Mr.Sudhindra wherein several other villagers too had participated and that an undertaking was reached for the withdrawal of the suit; it is in this background, the respondent had put his signatures to the blank papers which have been misused for crafting a Compromise in English, foreign to the 1st respondent who admittedly is an illiterate villager, as rightly contended by his counsel; in matters of the kind, signed blank papers being given to some reliable person for effectuating Panchayat Teermaana of the villagers becomes probabalized; such things do happen in village life, can be presumed u/s.114 of the Evidence Act, 1872, there being absolutely no material indicating the contra.

(b) The version of the 1st respondent herein that a Panchayat was held in the village with the participation of several persons and that a decision was taken for withdrawing the suit, is not only not disputed by the petitioners but is sought to be used as the substratum for sustaining the Compromise, as being its fall out; if the Panch decision was to withdraw the suit, presumably for bringing the battling parties to the negotiating table, this Court is at loss to know how a Compromise was put forth for securing a partition decree, especially when huge & several properties are in the suit fray; no plausible explanation for sustaining the said decree is forthcoming from the stand of the parties and the evidentiary material borne out by the record.

(c) It has been a long settled position of law that a decree founded on a compromise is nothing but a contract with seal of the court superadded; ordinarily, such a decree can be voided on the grounds that avail for avoiding a contract; since such a contract is sanctified by the seal of court, the degree of proof of the grounds for such avoidance may be bit higher, is true; to bring in a contract, there has to be meeting of the minds and that this is militantly lacking in the case at hands inasmuch as what was decided in the Panchayat was the withdrawal of suit, whereas what has been brought about in the suit is a Compromise Decree; they are poles asunder; thus even if there is arguably no fraud, the Compromise Decree was unsustainable, since it was founded on an arrangement not animated by ad idem of the parties.

(d) The vehement contention of learned counsel for the petitioners that the Compromise Decree havi