Ancestral Tube-Well On Defendants’ Land: P&H HC Upholds Injunction Denial, Saying Post-Consolidation Use Right Needs Proof

The plaintiffs sued for a permanent injunction to protect their alleged use of a tube-well installed by their common predecessor before consolidation. The land containing the tube-well was later allotted to the defendants. The defendants disputed the plaintiffs’ continued right of use and relied on electricity-payment receipts and evidence of separate irrigation facilities. The trial court declined ad-interim injunction; the District Judge dismissed the appeal but directed expeditious consideration of the application after pleadings. Ravinder Kumar challenged both orders under Article 227.

The High Court noted that the tube-well’s pre-consolidation installation and the post-consolidation allotment to the defendants were undisputed, while the petitioner’s continuing right of use remained contested.

Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 CPC require a prima facie case, balance of convenience and likelihood of irreparable injury; a prima facie case alone does not entitle a party to an injunction, as explained in Dalpat Kumar v. Prahlad Singh, (1992) 1 SCC 719.

Under Wander Ltd. v. Antox India (P) Ltd., 1990 Supp SCC 727, discretionary interim orders are not ordinarily disturbed unless the discretion was exercised arbitrarily, capriciously or perversely, or settled principles were ignored.

Article 227 supervisory jurisdiction is to be exercised sparingly and is not a further appeal for correcting every factual or legal error, as reiterated in Shalini Shyam Shetty v. Rajendra Shankar Patil, (2010) 8 SCC 329, and Garment Craft v. Prakash Chand Goel, (2022) 4 SCC 181.

A right to use a facility on another’s land may be legally enforceable if established through an express arrangement, easement or other enforceable obligation; prior joint ownership or common installation alone does not establish a continuing right after consolidation.

The petitioner’s claim rested on the tube-well’s common origin and alleged shared use and electricity contributions, but the defendants disputed continued use and produced receipts and material concerning separate bore-wells. The land’s allotment to the defendants did not, by itself, defeat a legally established user right; however, the petitioner had not placed sufficient material at the interim stage to establish such a right after consolidation.

Because the requested injunction could effectively confer access and use of land allotted to the defendants before the disputed entitlement was adjudicated, and because the application could be reconsidered after pleadings and evidence, the courts’ refusal of ad-interim relief was a reasonably possible exercise of discretion. No perversity or jurisdictional error justified Article 227 intervention.

It left the petitioner free to prove an independently enforceable right of use and directed the trial court to decide the pending injunction application on its merits, uninfluenced by the observations in the orders or judgment, preferably within six weeks after receipt of the certified copy and subject to completion of pleadings and a reasonable opportunity to the parties.