Displaced-person eligibility for evacuee land allotment depends on statutory status, not revenue records or administrative instructions.

Eligibility for allotment of evacuee land under the refugee and displaced-person scheme depended on the person having actually become a displaced person or refugee within the governing statutes and notification. A deceased owner who died before partition-driven displacement, and never acquired that status, could not be treated as entitled merely because his name remained in revenue records. Paragraph 17 of the resettlement manual was only an executive instruction and could not override or expand the statutory scheme. It was, at most, capable of a limited reading for a person who had already become a displaced person and died before allotment.

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Issues: Whether a person who died before the partition-driven displacement and never became a displaced person or refugee could still be treated as entitled to allotment of evacuee land merely because his name continued in the revenue records, and whether administrative instructions in the resettlement manual could override the statutory scheme.

Analysis: The relevant statutes and notification defined a displaced person or refugee by reference to a person who had abandoned land on account of civil disturbances, fear of such disturbances, or the partition of the country. A deceased owner who had died before such displacement and had not himself become a displaced landholder did not satisfy that definition. Paragraph 17 of the resettlement manual was only an executive or administrative instruction and had no statutory force. It could not be applied in a manner inconsistent with the governing enactments. The paragraph was capable of a limited construction only to cover a landholder who had already become a displaced person and died thereafter before allotment, not one who had never acquired that status.

Conclusion: The claim to allotment in the name of the deceased owner was not sustainable, and the respondents were entitled to relief.

Ratio Decidendi: Administrative instructions cannot prevail over statutory provisions, and eligibility for allotment under the refugee and displaced-person scheme requires that the person concerned must have become a displaced person or refugee within the meaning of the governing law.

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