D.P. GUPTA, J.—The petitioner seeks to challenge the order of the Board of Revenue for Rajasthan dated January 5, 1977, which was passed on an appeal under sec. 23 of the Rajasthan Imposition of Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings Act, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the Act).

2. The undisputed facts are that the petitioner received a large chunk of agricultural land from her father and out of the aforesaid land she transferred parcels of land to various persons including her husband, her three sons and her daughter by means of registered sale deeds executed on different dates. Proceedings under sec. 11 of the Act where started against the petitioner and her husband by the Authorised Officer (Ceiling), Sri Ganganager and both of them on receiving notices under sub-sec. (1) of sec. 11 filed their returns. After an enquiry the Authorised Officer came to the conclusion that the youngest son of the petitioner, Gurusharan Singh, was a minor and the transfer of land in favour of the aforesaid minor son by the petitioner on December 19, 1972 could not be recognised for the purposes of determination of the ceiling area applicable to the petitioner and her husband and by his order dated August 28, 1975 the said Officer held that the petitioner, her husband Sadul Singh and their minor son Gurusharan Singh constituted a primary unit of family, for the purposes of computation of ceiling area under the provisions of the Act. The Authorised Officer prepared a draft statement under sec. 12(1) of the Act after ignoring the transfer of land made by the petitioner on December, 19, 1972 in favour of her minor son from consideration. Since the petitioner or her husband did not submit any objections to the draft statement, the same was finalised by the Authorised Officer by his order dated October 8, 1975. An appeal to the Collector, Ganganagar was dismissed on March 12, 1976 and a further appeal to the Board of Revenue by the petitioner came to be dismissed by the order dated January 5, 1977,

3. The submission of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the concerned authorities were in error in including the land individually held by the petitioner while computing the ceiling area applicable to the family and relied upon the decisions of the Bombay High Court in Madanlal Shankar vs. State(l) and Narayanrao vs. State (2) in support of his contention. It was held in the aforesaid two cases that separate holdings held by the members of the family cannot be clubbed with the holding belonging to the family. Both the aforesaid decisions are based upon the provisions of the Maharashtra Agricultural Land (Ceiling on Holdings) Act, 1961, which are materially different from the provisions of the Act with which we are concerned and as such the aforesaid two decisions cannot be made applicable to the facts of the present case. In the first place, the definition of "family" as given in the Maharashtra Act is very wide as compared to the definition given in sub sec. (f) of sec. 2 of the Act, wherein a family has been restricted to husband, wife and their minor children, excluding married minor daughters. In the Act an artificial definition of the expression "family" has been introduced which is different from the concept of a joint Hindu family. In the second place there appears to be no provision in the Maharashtra Act corresponding to sub sec. (c) of sec. 5 of the Act, which provides that all lands held individually by the members of a family shall be deemed to be held by the family and shall be clubbed together. According to the scheme of the Act a person, which includes any trust, company, firm or association or body of individuals whether incorporated or not, or a family as defined in sub-sec. (f) of sec. 2 of the Act constitutes a primary unit for the computation of the ceiling area applicable to such person or family, subject to the condition that such family should consist of five or less than five members. Under sec. 4 of the Act, the ceiling area

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