JUDGMENT :

Ashutosh Kumar, J.

1. A rejoinder to the counter affidavit has been filed across the board.

2. Let it be taken on record.

3. Heard Mr. Sunil Singh, learned Advocate for the appellants, Mr. Gautam Kejriwal for the respondent nos.6 to 8 and Mr. Shailendra Kumar Dwivedi for the State.

4. The appellants claim to be the bataidars, who had approached the learned Deputy Collector, Land Reforms, Katihar (hereinafter for the sake of brevity referred to as ‘DCLR’) under Section 48E of the Bihar Tenancy Act, 1885 (hereinafter referred to as ‘B.T. Act’) against threatened ejectment by the private-respondents /landlords. The DCLR in Batai Case No.745 of 2011-12 passed an order on 16.06.2012 rejecting the bataidari claim of the appellants. The aforesaid order was put to challenge in C.W.J.C. No.21216 of 2012 in which a Bench of this Court, finding that proper procedure had not been followed and the case appeared to have been ante-dated without any notice to the appellants in which an order against them was passed, set aside the aforesaid order and remanded the matter to the DCLR, Katihar to decide the matter afresh on merits with the caveat that the parties were not to be allowed to file any fresh document, except original documents and the DCLR was directed by the aforesaid order dated 11.12.2014 to conclude the process within a period of one month from the date of receipt/production of a copy of this order.

5. Pursuant to the aforesaid remand, the matter was placed before the DCLR, who, vide his order dated 14.07.2015, constituted a Conciliation Board for the needful.

6. The order passed by a Bench of this Court in C.W.J.C. No.21216 of 2012, remanding the matter to the DCLR, was also put to challenge by the private-respondents/landlords vide L.P.A. No.697 of 2015, which was dismissed by order dated 26.07.2017.

7. Before the order in L.P.A. could be passed, the DCLR, on remand, has already taken a decision to constitute a Conciliation Board for deciding the dispute between the appellants/battaidars, as claimed, and the private-respondents/landlords.

8. After three years, on 05.11.2018, the DCLR, Kaithar, without any report from the Conciliation Board, passed an order rejecting the claim of the appellants of being bataidars of the private-respondents/landlords for the reason that according to the claim of the appellants, the land in question was under cultivation since 1986 but the appellants were not majors; but were minors in 1986 and, therefore, they could not have been inducted as bataidars and that at one point of time, according to their own claim, they had offered to purchase the land in question for consideration amount of Rs.3 lakhs, for which Rs.2.5 lakhs had already been paid.

9. The claim thus was not found to be tenable in the absence of any document in that regard and that even if it were true, the issue of purchase could not have been decided in a bataidari case.

10. Against the aforesaid order, the appellants preferred a writ petition vide C.W.J.C. No.3195 of 2019.

11. The learned Single Judge vide his judgment and order dated 27.02.2019 rejected the claim of the appellants and sustained the order of the DCLR by holding that in the year 1986, it was self evident from the records that the appellants were 17 and 21 years of age respectively and, therefore, they could not have been inducted as bataidars and that the appellants had not made out any categorical case of their being bataidars and thus there was no necessity of constituting a Conciliation Board.

12. The learned Single Judge went on to the extent of declaring that the earlier order passed by the DCLR, constituting the Conciliation Board, did not estop him to again pass an order on merits, rejecting the claim of bataidari of the appellants in absence of any report/resolution of the Board.

13. Hence, this appeal.

14. Mr. Sunil Singh, learned Advocate has urged that the learned Single Judge did not at all take into account that once a Conciliation Board was constituted, the