The main legal point established in the judgment is that the exercise of revisional jurisdiction must be within a reasonable time, and that mutation does not confer title to the property.

JUDGMENT :

1. The petitioners are the sons whereas the respondent No.5 i.e. Mst. Azizi (now deceased) was the daughter of Mst. Rehti respectively. On 03.08.1980, the mutation bearing No.715 was attested after the demise of Mst. Rehti, who owned and possessed land in Village Narkara Budgam, in favour of the petitioners. It is stated that the abovementioned mutation was attested in favour of the petitioners with the consent of Mst. Azizi by the competent Revenue Officer in presence of Village Guard and other respectables of the village, more particularly the father of the petitioners and Mst. Azizi. The deceased-respondent No.5, after a period of more than three decades, assailed the mutation No.715 through the medium of an appeal before the respondent No.3. The petitioners claim to have questioned the jurisdiction of the respondent No.3 in entertaining the appeal in view of order No.536 of 1999. It is alleged by the petitioners that as the respondent No.3 was exerting pressure upon them to settle the issue with respondent No.5, the petitioners filed a transfer application before the respondent No.2 for transferring the appeal from the respondent No.3 to any other court of competent jurisdiction. The respondent No.2 vide order dated 19.11.2011 called for the para-wise report to the transfer application and also sought the record of appeal from the respondent No.3 by or before 12.12.2011. It is stated that on 28.12.2011, neither the para-wise report nor the record of appeal was available with the respondent No.2 but the respondent No.2 in absence of the para-wise report, not only allowed the transfer application and transferred the appeal to its own Court but subsequently in absence of the record of the appellate authority, also disposed of the same by accepting the appeal thereby setting aside the mutation No.715 and remanded the case back to respondent No.4 with a direction to pass a fresh mutation after de-novo enquiry.

2. The petitioners being aggrieved of order dated 28.12.2011 passed by the respondent No.2, assailed the same by way of a revision petition before the respondent No.1 and the respondent No.2 also made the reference to respondent No.1 in respect of the order passed in respect of disposal of appeal. The respondent No.1 by virtue of order dated 08.08.2017, set aside mutation No.715 dated 03.08.1980 and disposed of the matter with a direction to the respondent No.4 to conduct de-novo enquiry and pass fresh orders. By virtue of the same order, the respondent No.1 also directed that the order dated 08.08.2017 shall also result in disposal of the appeal preferred by the respondent No.5.

3. The petitioners through the medium of present petition have impugned the order dated 08.08.2017 on the following grounds :

(I) That the respondent No.1 has not considered the issue that the respondent No.5 out of her free will, volition and without any force had consented for attestation of mutation No.715 dated 03.08.1980 but after a gap of more than 32 years, she had preferred an appeal, no doubt with an application seeking condonation of delay but the respondent No.1 did not consider this aspect of the matter;

(II) That the respondent No.1 has erroneously held that surrender of rights before a revenue officer is not recognized mode of transfer under any prevalent law and the argument that the impugned mutation being a consented one is covered under Section 96 of CPC, does not hold good, is contrary to the judgment passed in case titled ‘Khati & Ors. v. Ali Mohd. Sofi & Anr. [2014 (4) JKJ 106];

(III) That the observation of respondent No.1 that void and illegal order can be challenged at any time and no period of limitation can be invoked to perpetuate such illegality, is contrary to the decision of the Hon’ble Division Bench in LPA No.149/2013 titled “Inhabitants of Village Deru vs. State of J&K and others”;

4. The respondent No.5 has filed the response stating therein that the petitioners and respondent No.5 are entangled in civil liti