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Basheera Khanum v. The City Municipal Council and Another

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 955Decided 31 Jul 2025
Civil Appeal No(s). 9317 of 2014
Justice Aravind Kumar · Justice Sandeep Mehta

Background

The appellant, Basheera Khanum, claimed she had purchased Plot No. 394 at a municipal auction in 1977 and had a valid sale certificate, while respondent No. 2 had separately purchased the adjoining Plot No. 395, but a clerical error in respondent No. 2's 1988 sale deed wrongly described his plot as No. 394. After the City Municipal Council itself corrected this error by resolution in 1992 (confirming Basheera Khanum's plot as 394), respondent No. 2 later colluded with the Council to pass a fresh resolution in 1993 purporting to cancel her sale deed and reassign Plot No. 394 to him. She sued for declaration and injunction; the trial court and first appellate court both ruled in her favour, but the High Court, in second appeal, reversed and held she had failed to prove her title.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court restored the trial court's decree and reversed the High Court, holding that the High Court's finding that the appellant failed to discharge her burden of proof was "recorded in sheer ignorance of the evidence on record and is absolutely perverse." It held that certified copies of municipal records, admissible under Section 376 of the Karnataka Municipalities Act, 1964, together with money receipts and the Council's own 1992 rectification resolution, overwhelmingly proved her purchase of Plot No. 394. The Council's failure to produce the original auction records despite a court direction rightly invited an adverse inference against it. The Court also held that a valid registered sale certificate cannot be annulled merely by a municipal board resolution: such action requires a proper civil suit, and the Council's 1993 resolution attempting to do so was "grossly illegal and high-handed."

Lesson Learnt

A government or municipal body cannot informally cancel someone's registered title by simply passing an internal resolution, undoing a valid, registered property document requires due process through a court of law, and public bodies bear a heavy burden to produce their own records when a citizen's documented title is challenged.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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