The public law remedy under article 226 should not be used to serve political expectations, and the Court should not intrude into a territory reserved for the Executive.

JUDGMENT

Rahul Bharti, J. - Heard learned counsel for the parties.

2. A public law remedy under article 226 of the Constitution of India is not meant to be used as a catalyst to seek and serve the political expectations and interests of person or group of persons in relation to an administrative/statutory act and decision taken on the part of the public authorities. A writ Court is not equipped with any expertise to examine the expediency of a decision of creation of a tehsil or district through the lens of competing and contrary expectations of inhabitants of the areas suffering inclusion and exclusion qua a new tehsil.

3. Writ petitions-OWP no. 155/2015 and OWP no. 1098/2015 are taken together for adjudication as in both the writ petitions the subjectdispute is same though the respective petitioners in the two writ petitions are claiming reliefs counter to each others' position set up in the respective writ petitions.

4. Writ petition-OWP no. 155/2015 is by six petitioners who approached this Court bearing their status as Sarpanch of their respective panchayats falling in tehsil Nowshera district Rajouri. The petitioners in their writ petition set up the cause in a representative capacity.

5. Tehsil Nowshera, district Rajouri came to suffer alteration for creation of new tehsil out of its original territorial extent. The then bout of the State of Jammu and Kashmir came to exercise its power under section 5 of the Land Revenue Act Svt. 1996 for altering the number of sub-divisions, tehsils and niabats by creating new sub-divisions, tehsils and niabats in and of the district Rajouri and for this purpose SRO 448 dated 21.10.2014 came to be promulgated.

6. New tehsil which came to be carved out of the existing tehsil Nowshera is tehsil Beri Pattan and the headquarter (HQ) of the said new tehsil was also declared to be at Beri Pattan. In creation of this new tehsil of Beri Pattan, some panchayats came to be included and some panchayats remained excluded to stay in tehsil Nowshera which suffered bifurcation.

7. The petitioners in OWP no. 1098/2015 came forward with a grievance that panchayats of Mangal Dei, Deeing and Gagrote ought not to have been excluded from being included in new tehsil Beri Pattan and whereas villages namely Kuldabbi, Talla Tanda, Nah, Patni and Dhar should not have been included in new tehsil Beri Pattan which otherwise were falling in tehsil Sunderbani. In addition to this, the grievance of the petitioners was also with respect to the fact that the headquarter (HQ) of tehsil Beri Pattan was not getting established and operational at tehsil Beri Pattan. For their alleged grievance, the petitioners referred the fact of exclusion of panchayat halqas of Mangal Dei, Deeing and Gagrota from being included in tehsil Beri Pattan to be an act actuated with malice both in law and facts and detrimental to the public interest and the inclusion of the villages at Sunderbani in tehsil Beri Pattan as misconceived.

8. In the preorganized tehsil Nowshera, area of Beri Pattan was falling in Panchayat Halqa Mangot. The exclusion of the aforementioned panchayat halqa from being included in Beri Pattan and inclusion of the aforementioned villages in new tehsil Beri Pattan was referred as an act without proper application of mind on the part of the respondents.

9. The petitioners reckoned that panchayat halqas namely Mangal Dei, Deeing and Gagrote, distance wise, are closer to tehsil Beri Pattan and as such warranted their inclusion in the said tehsil whereas, the villages Kuldabbi, Talla Tanda, Nah, Pattni and Dhar are far away from tehsil Beri Pattan and should have remained with tehsil Sunderbani.

10. The writ petitioners in OWP no. 1098/2015 are two in number and they belong to village Kangri which came to fall in new tehsil Beri Pattan. In their writ petition, the petitioners came forward bearing the representative capacity on behalf of the residents of twelve villages falling under tehsil Sunderbani and their grievance was two fold