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Jt. Collector Ranga Reddy Dist. & Anr. Etc. v. D. Narsing Rao & Ors. Etc. Etc.

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal Nos. 325-326 of 2015)Decided 13 Jan 2015
Civil Appeal Nos. 325-326 of 2015
Justice C. Nagappan · Justice T.S. Thakur

Background

Residents of Gopanpally village in Ranga Reddy district (Andhra Pradesh/Telangana) held land recorded in their predecessors' names in the 1954-55 "Khasra Pahani" (revenue record), which they had purchased under registered sale deeds and had been paying land revenue on since 1954. In 1991, the Government reserved a large tract of this land (including the petitioners' parcels) for house-sites for government employees, and in 2004, roughly 50 years after the original entries, issued a notice seeking to cancel those entries as fraudulent. The landholders challenged the notice, and the Andhra Pradesh High Court (Single Judge and Division Bench) ruled in their favour.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court dismissed the Government's appeals, holding that even where a statute prescribes no limitation period for exercising a revisional/corrective power (here, Section 166B of the A.P. (Telangana Area) Land Revenue Act), such power must still be exercised within a "reasonable time." The Court found the Government had every opportunity to verify the revenue entries as early as 1991, and gave no explanation for the roughly 13-50 year delay in acting. Since the notice did not even state when the alleged fraud was discovered, the exercise of revisional power so long after the fact was arbitrary and could not be sustained, though the Court clarified it was not ruling on the merits of the fraud allegation itself and left the State free to pursue other lawful remedies.

Lesson Learnt

Even when a law does not fix a time limit for a government authority to revisit or correct its own records, that power cannot be used after an unreasonably long and unexplained delay: citizens who have relied on official records and paid dues accordingly for decades gain a strong claim to finality and security of title.

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

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