SRINAGAR: The Ladakh Bench of the Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has dismissed a petition filed by villagers of Chutuk challenging trial court orders that allowed additional defendants to be impleaded in a civil suit over the distribution of more than 300 kanals of non-cultivable village land.
Justice Sanjay Parihar, in an order dated October 22, 2026, held that the trial court had committed no jurisdictional error in permitting amendments to the plaint and allowing the proceedings to continue. The Court found no grounds to interfere with the challenged orders under Article 227 of the Constitution, which confers supervisory jurisdiction over subordinate courts.
The dispute centres on land in village Chutuk covered by Survey Nos. 3986, 3987, 3988, 3989, 3994 and 3996. According to the court record, the revenue authorities attested a mutation in favour of Chutuk villagers in 2016, and the land was subsequently taken up for distribution among eligible residents.
Mohammad Hussain, the plaintiff in the original suit, claimed that he was a resident of Chutuk and was entitled to a share in the land but had been excluded from the list of beneficiaries. The defendants disputed his claim, maintaining that he belonged to village Minji and was therefore not entitled to any share.
The villagers who approached the High Court challenged four orders passed by the trial court on March 23, June 9, June 25 and September 19, 2022. They argued that the suit was not maintainable in its original form, that necessary parties had not been impleaded and that Hussain should have obtained the court’s permission under Order I Rule 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure to pursue the case in a representative capacity.
They also questioned the trial court’s decision to permit amendments after objections to the maintainability of the suit had been raised. Their counsel contended that the changes had altered the nature of the proceedings and prejudiced their interests. They further argued that a subsequent direction to maintain status quo was unwarranted because an earlier order to that effect had already been passed.
Rejecting the objection regarding representative proceedings, Justice Parihar observed that Hussain had sought to enforce his own claimed entitlement to a share in the village land rather than seeking relief on behalf of all villagers.
The Court held that the fact that other residents had an interest in the common land did not, by itself, make the suit a representative action requiring compliance with Order I Rule 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
It observed that the plaintiff’s grievance was his alleged exclusion from the distribution process, not a challenge to the rights of the villagers as a class. His claim, therefore, remained individual in nature despite involving common village land.
The Court also found no legal bar to allowing amendments merely because the defendants had already raised objections over the non-joinder of necessary parties. It said procedural defects could be rectified where the proposed changes were legally permissible and did not cause prejudice that could not be addressed during the proceedings.
The trial court had permitted villagers of Chutuk to be brought on record and subsequently allowed the relief clause in the plaint to be extended to the newly added defendants, numbered 6 to 13. It also gave the defendants an opportunity to file their written statements to the amended plaint.
Justice Parihar held that these changes neither introduced an entirely new cause of action nor fundamentally altered the character of the suit. The central issue remained whether Hussain was a resident of Chutuk and, if so, whether he was entitled to inclusion among the beneficiaries of the land distribution.
The Court further rejected the argument that the absence of a prayer for possession rendered the suit unmaintainable. It noted that Hussain had not claimed exclusive ownership of a specifically demarcated portion of the land but had sought consideration for inclusion in its distribution.
The question of his residential status and consequential entitlement, the Court said, required determination on the basis of pleadings and evidence. These issues could not be conclusively decided while examining challenges to interlocutory orders permitting amendments and the addition of parties.
On the status quo issue, the Court noted that the original direction dated September 14, 2021, had been issued when only five defendants were parties to the suit. Following the addition of defendants 6 to 13, the trial court considered it necessary to extend the protective direction to them as well.
It held that the subsequent direction was intended to preserve the subject matter of the dispute and prevent the proceedings from being rendered infructuous. No jurisdictional infirmity or manifest illegality had been established, it said.
The petitioners had relied on the judgments in Gian Chand v. Mangi Ram and Kayalulla Parambath Moidu Haji v. Namboodiyil Vinodan. However, the High Court held that the cited decisions did not support their case in the circumstances of the dispute.
Reiterating the limits of its supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227, the Court referred to the Supreme Court’s judgment in Shalini Shyam Shetty and Another v. Rajendra Shankar Patil, observing that such powers were not intended to correct every alleged error by a subordinate court. Intervention was warranted in cases involving jurisdictional errors, patent perversity or manifest injustice.
Finding no such grounds in the challenged orders, the High Court dismissed the petition and vacated any interim directions issued in the proceedings.
The trial court has been directed to proceed with the suit in accordance with law and make every endeavour to conclude the trial expeditiously.
The High Court clarified that its observations were confined to the petition and would not determine the merits of the underlying dispute. The trial court must decide the rival claims independently on the basis of the evidence, pleadings and applicable law.
