MP HC Upholds Refusal Of Land Injunction After Claimant Omitted 2002 Partition And Her Earlier Dismissed Appeal

The petitioner filed a suit for declaration and permanent injunction concerning 4 Bigha and 11 Biswa of agricultural land, claiming rights through earlier sale deeds and a 1972 agreement to sell.

She alleged that the respondents had obtained signatures or thumb impressions fraudulently and were interfering with the land.

The Trial Court rejected her application for temporary injunction under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 CPC, finding insufficient material to establish a prima facie case and possession over the entire suit land, among other concerns.

The Lower Appellate Court affirmed, also finding that the petitioner had not disclosed a 2002 partition and the dismissal of her appeal against it.

The petitioner challenged both orders under Article 227 of the Constitution.

Under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 CPC, temporary injunction requires a prima facie case, balance of convenience in the applicant’s favour, and a clear possibility of irreparable injury; because it is equitable relief, the applicant must also approach the court with clean hands (Seema Arshad Zaheer v. Municipal Corpn. of Greater Mumbai, para. 30, quoted at para. 23).

A litigant must disclose all material facts, and material suppression may disentitle the litigant to relief (Bhaskar Laxman Jadhav v. Karamveer Kakasaheb Wagh Education Society, discussed at para. 24).

An appellate court should not substitute its discretion on an interlocutory injunction unless the discretion below was arbitrary, capricious, perverse, or contrary to settled principles (Wander Ltd. v. Antox India P. Ltd., quoted at para. 26).

Under Article 227, the High Court does not interfere with concurrent factual findings unless they are perverse (Skyline Education Institute (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. S.L. Vaswani, cited at para. 27).

The petitioner’s revenue record showed her name only in two of the eleven survey numbers, alongside other persons who were not impleaded, and the record did not establish possession over the remaining survey numbers.

The 1972 agreement to sell, under which no sale deed followed, did not establish a prima facie title or possession; those matters required evidence at trial.

The courts below also found that the petitioner had pleaded that the land remained undivided while omitting the 2002 partition and the dismissal of her appeal.

The High Court held that these findings were supported by the record and that the courts below had applied the governing principles for temporary injunction.

Their concurrent findings were not perverse, and therefore did not warrant supervisory interference.

It dismissed the petition, leaving the Trial Court to decide the suit on its merits, uninfluenced by observations made in the injunction proceedings.