The main legal point established in the judgment is that the right to retain surplus land is subject to the final decision in appeal or revision, and illegally acquired rights cannot be perfected.

1. The present L.P.A. has been filed against the order dated 9.7.2008 in C.W.J.C. No. 9400 of 2005 whereby and whereunder the connected writ application questioning a direction of the competent authority to denotify the surplus land of Respondent Nos. 5 to 7 and cancelling the settlement of such land to the petitioners at the behest of the appellant-writ petitioners has been dismissed by the learned Single Judge.

2. The facts giving rise to this appeal lie in a very narrow compass.

3. The appellant-writ petitioners had filed the connected writ petition, C.W.J.C. No. 9400 of 2005 for a direction to the respondents for restraining them from being removed of their respective possession of surplus land settled as also for quashing of the order dated 8.9.2004 wherein the Additional Collector, Gaya, while modifying notification no. 823-824 dated 21.6.2003 by a notification no. 923- 924 dated 6.2.2004 had directed to submit a proposal for cancellation of Parwana if settlement of land had already been in terms of the notification dated 21.6.2003. The appellant-writ petitioners in fact had claimed that land had been settled to them and Parwana had been issued in the year 1993-94 and as such, they ought to have been given notice and/or given opportunity of hearing before passing of the impugned order by the Additional Collector, Gaya, dated 8.9.2004.

4. Learned Single Judge after considering the materials on record and in the light of the averment made in the counter affidavit filed by the respondents had dismissed the writ application by holding that such settlement of land in favour of the appellant-writ petitioners was a fall-out of a land ceiling proceeding wherein land of the respondent nos. 5, 6 and 7 was declared to be surplus under Section 15(1) of the Bihar Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling Area and Acquisition of Surplus Land) Act, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as the Act) but when the said notification was itself quashed by this Court in the pending writ petition filed by the landholders, respondent nos. 5, 6 and 7, the appellant-writ petitioners had been left with no right to retain such land and to that extent he has also applied the doctrine of lis pendens.

5. Assailing the aforementioned finding recorded in the impugned order passed by the learned Single Judge learned counsel for the appellant-writ petitioners has submitted that the right of the appellant- writ petitioners of being heard in a proceeding arising out of Act had been settled in the judgment of the Apex Court in the case of Baban Paswan and Another V/s. Pratima Devi and Others reported in (2003)10 Supreme Court Cases 239. Therefore, once it was admitted that the impugned order for cancellation of settlement of land and the consequential Parwana of the appellant-writ petitioners was passed on 8.9.2004 by the Additional Collector without affording an opportunity of hearing to the appellant-writ petitioners, the same was fit to be interfered and quashed by following the ratio of Baban Paswan (supra).

6. Per contra, learned counsel for the respondents has submitted that the order dated 8.9.2004 was passed by the Additional Collector, Gaya, only by way of compliance of the order of this Court in the writ petition filed by the respondent nos. 5, 6 and 7 assailing the correctness of the notification issued under Section 15(1) of the Act wherein it was held that they were entitled to get two more units of land and thus retained their land which was declared surplus in the earlier notification dated 21.6.2003. It has been further contended that the remedy for the writ-petitioners therefore was to seek review of the order of this Court passed in the writ application filed by the landholders, respondent nos. 5 to 7, because such orders had remained unchallenged and unaffected, there was no option for the official respondents but to exempt the lands in question from the purview of the proceeding under the Act.

7. In our considered opinion, the submission of the