Section 3(a) of the Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1953 (Punjab Act No. 1 of 1954) vests all rights, title, and interests in the land included in the shamilat deh in the Panchayat, irrespective of the persons having such rights, title, or interests.

Mehar Singh, J.

1. The question referred to the Full Bench is:

"Whether the scope of Clause (a) of Sec. 3 of the Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1953 (Punjab Act No. 1 of 1954), is limited to the rights, title and interests of properietors as such, or does it also extend to the rights, title and interests in the land included in the Shamilar deh of the village, acquired from the proprietors as such, prior to and subsisting on the appointed date,"

In Section 2 (e) of the Act "appointed date" is defined to mean in the case of a village which is subject to the jurisdiction of a Panchayat at the commencement of the Act, the date of such commencement; and in other cases, the date on which 9 Panchayat with jurisdiction over the village is constituted. This is a case from village Ghanyara, Taluqa Rehlu, Tehsil and District Kangra. A Panchayat has in fact been constituted in the village.

2. The proprietors or zamindars of the village on February 28, 1867, granted a perpetual lease in favour of one Mr. Shaw to work slate quarries and to excavate slates in certain area of land, now in dispute, which admittedly has throughout been shamilat deh and described as such in the revenue records. The copy of an extract, Exhibit P. 78, from the Dastur-ul-amal of the Settlement of 1868 shows that in the lease la favour of Mr. Shaw there is a condition that the said lessee shall be in possession and occupation of even the slate quarries which may be discovered after the date of the lease.

This lease was accepted by the Revenue Authorities at the time of that Settlement in an agreement with the proprietors, as it is clear from this copy of the Dastur-ul-amal. Ordinarily in view of Sections 41 and 42 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, mineral rights and ownership of quarries and the like belong to the State Government subject to exceptional cases, one of them being an agreement with the State Government to the contrary.

It appears from this extract from the Dastur-ul-amal that the then Government left untouched the right of quarrying and extraction of slates from the shamilat area leased by the proprietors to Mr. Shaw, in other words, it left such rights intact with the proprietors, though other mineral rights were resumed as is clear from the same document.

The plaintiff is the successor of Mr. Shaw and in fact it appears that Mr. Shaw transferred his rights to the plaintiff even before the Settlement and then took over the management of the plaintiff. The defendants, 89 in number, belong to the particular village and they have been sued by the plaintiff for the issue of permanent injunction against them restraining them from interferring with all the exclusive rights of the plaintiff with regard to the excavating and selling of slates of the quarries and other places being worked or to be worked in the future in this particular village and for damages for what has already been taken out from the land by those defendants.

The suit was instituted on March 24, 195-3. During the pendency of this suit Punjab Act No. 1 of 1954 came into force on January 9, 1954. Thereupon the defendants raised the plea that under Section 3 of the Act the land in dispute being shamilat deh if was vested in the Panchayat and the plaintiff has no longer any title to it to continue its claim against the defendants. This defence prevailed with the learned trial Judge and while the learned Judge decided the other issues also but he dismissed the suit of the plaintiff.

3. It is in the course of the hearing of the appeal against the decree dismissing the suit of the plaintiff that the question referred to above has arisen and the learned Judges have by the referring order of May 12, 1960, referred it to a larger Bench. This is how the question comes before us for consideration.

4. The name and the heading of the Act has already been given. The preamble says that it is "an Act to regulate the rights in shamilat deh and abadi deh". The expression "shamilat deh" i