M.R.R. Setty (Dead) By LRs v. Government of Karnataka
Background
M.R.R. Setty had purchased land in Bengaluru in 1929, and in 1974 it was allotted City Title Survey numbers, later being developed into a residential apartment building with full municipal sanction and an occupancy certificate. In 2014, decades later, the Joint Director/Registrar of Land Records issued a notice under Section 56 of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964, cancelling the earlier survey order and directing a fresh enquiry, prompted by a third party's complaint that a nearby lake was being encroached upon. A single judge of the Karnataka High Court quashed the notice as time-barred, but a Division Bench reversed that on appeal by the State, and a review petition by Setty (who died during the proceedings and was represented by his legal heirs) was also dismissed.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that Section 56(3)'s proviso sets a clear three-year limitation for exercising revisional jurisdiction over an unappealed order, and the notice issued in 2014 against a 1974 survey order was far beyond that period. It rejected the State's arguments that Section 52 (applying the Limitation Act) or the amended Section 25 (inherent powers of a "Revenue Court") could rescue the notice, holding that the original 1974 allotment was an administrative act, not a quasi-judicial Revenue Court decision, so Section 25 did not apply. Relying on precedent (including State of Gujarat v. Patil Raghav Natha and SEBI v. Sunil Krishna Khaitan), the Court reaffirmed that even where no limitation is prescribed, revisional power must be exercised within a reasonable time, and here Parliament had prescribed an explicit three-year limit that was plainly breached, with third-party rights (construction, occupancy) having crystallised long before the notice. The Division Bench's judgment and the review dismissal were set aside, and the 2014 notice was quashed as it pertained to the appellants' land.
Lesson Learnt
A statutory limitation period on a government authority's revisional power is a hard boundary. It cannot be circumvented by recasting the dispute as a matter of "public interest" (like protecting a lake), especially once the property owner has built up decades of settled rights, sanctioned construction, and occupancy on the strength of the original order.