1. This Civil Second Appeal being not maintainable, has been treated as a petition of revision. The facts of the case in brief are these. Land measuring 9 kanals 18 marlas comprising khasra No. 197 situated in village Chakka Tehsil Bhaderwah is recorded in the ownership and possession of the respondents, who are brothers. Out of this, 18 marlas have been transferred by respondent, Anyatullah in favour of the petitioner vide lease deed executed on 25-05-1995 and registered by the Sub-Registrar, Bhaderwah on 27-05-1995.

2. The plaintiff, Liaqat Ali respondent herein, filed a suit for permanent injunction to restrain the appellant from interfering in the possession of the land on the basis of this lease deed, which according to him, is valid.

3. He also applied for ad-interim injunction, restraining the appellant from interfering in with his possession on the basis of the lease deed. This application under order 39 of the Code of Civil Procedure was rejected by the learned trial court on 15-12-1997 by observing as under: -

The cumulative effect of what has been said and done above is that on the face of a registered instrument of lease which the non-applicant No. 1 has executed it cannot be said that the petitioner has the prima facie existence of a right in his favour or has any equities in his favour. No loss will be caused to the petitioner in case the temporary injunction as prayed for is not granted to him nor will he be subjected to any inconvenience, while as, all inconvenience will be caused to the no-applicant No. 1 in case he is divested of his right to enjoy the subject matter of lease in confirmity to the terms and conditions of the deed of lease executed in his favour by virtue of a registered instrument except of course that the term of the lease has to be put at Twenty one years only.

This order was set-aside by the appellate court and substituted by an order of status-quo with a direction to the trial court to decide the question of possession before deciding an application under order 39, Rule-1 of Civil Procedure Code.

4. The appellant challenges the order on the ground that the order of status-quo without determining actual possession will create more problems than solving any.

5. The question is whether the trial court was justified in directing the parties to maintain status-quo without holding either party in possession. A status-quo order without determining the possessions capable of being understood and exploited by the parties as held in I. Albert Vs. Lalitha, AIR 1989 Madras 73. It reads as under:

It is no doubt true that parties are well aware of the real state of things as they exist. But when they are fighting with each other, in court of law, advancing cases diametrically opposed to each other, neither of them can be expected to meekly reconcile to the situation and stop interfering with the possession of the opposite party even if that is the real status-quo. Invariably, the immediate consequence is that the party who is not in possession would attempt to get into possession on by asserting that he had been in possession already and on the date of the status-quo order he was in possession with the result that there would be a clash between the parties leading to intervention by police and criminal proceedings. There is no justification whatever for a civil court driving the parties to criminal proceedings by passing an order of ˜status-quo™ without indicting what the status-quo is. This is nothing but a grave dereliction on the part of the Civil Court of its duty to decide a disputed question of fact. The court is bound to decide prima facie on the materials available, whether the plaintiff is in possession or the defendant is in possession. Leaving the matter in doubt and ambiguity by passing an order of status-quo will result in more dangerous consequence than even deciding wrongly but clearly that one of the parties is in possession.

The court further observed as under: -

..Whether a court passes

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