Appointment of assessors and procedure of referee

(1) When a Revenue Officer appoints referee under the last foregoing section, he may give him instructions with respect to the association with himself of any other persons as assessors, the number, qualifications and selection of those assessors, and the procedure to be followed in making the division or appraisement. (2) The referee so appointed shall make the division or appraisement in accordance with any instructions which he may have received from the Revenue Officer under the last foregoing sub-section. (3) Before making the division or appraisement the referee shall give notice to the landowner and the tenant of the time and place at which the division or appraisement will be made, but, if either the landowner or the tenant fails to attend either personally or by agent, the referee may proceed ex-parte. (4) For the purpose of making the division or appraisement, the referee, with his assessors, if any, may enter upon any land on which or into any building in which the produce is. When the payment of the rent of any land has been suspended under this sub-section it shall remain under suspension, until the Collector orders the revenue of that land to be realised. (2) An order passed under sub-section (1) shall not be liable to be contested by suit in any Court. (3) A suit shall not lie for the recovery of any rent of which the payment has been remitted, or during the period of suspension of any rent of which the payment has been suspended. (4) Where the payment of rent has been suspended, the period during which the suspension has continued shall be excluded in the computation of the period of limitation prescribed for a suit for the recovery of the rent. (5) It shall be an offence for a landowner to collect from a tenant any rent of which payment has been remitted or is under suspension, and he shall on conviction by a magistrate, be liable to imprisonment which may extend to six months or punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or with both. (6) The provisions of this section relating to the remission and suspension of the payment of rent may be applied, so far as they can be made applicable, to land of which the land revenue has been released, compounded for or redeemed, in any case in which, if the land revenue in respect of the land had not been released, compounded for or redeemed, the whole or any part of it might, in the opinion of the Revenue Officer, be remitted, or suspended under the rules for the time being in force for regulating the remission and suspension of land revenue.