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Rajnarayan Sharma v. Sirnam Sharma and Others

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 891Decided 12 Sept 2017
Civil Appeal No. 7444 of 2009
Justice Arun Mishra · Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar

Background

The plaintiffs (respondents before the Supreme Court) sued for declaration of title, injunction, and cancellation of two sale deeds, claiming they had been sub-lessees in possession of certain agricultural land in Madhya Pradesh since the 1970s. The trial court decreed in the plaintiffs' favour, the first appellate court reversed and dismissed the suit, and the High Court then partly allowed the plaintiffs' second appeal, holding they had no title at all to the land, but that they were nonetheless in settled possession and could not be dispossessed except through due process of law.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court noted that the plaintiffs had not challenged the High Court's finding that they had no title, so that finding had become final. The only live question was whether the plaintiffs were actually in possession of the land. The Court found that the plaintiffs had no documentary evidence of possession, their claimed lease and rent payment were unproven, and that the revenue (khasra) entries they relied on for certain years had themselves been formally cancelled by a competent revenue officer as incorrect, a fact the High Court had overlooked. By contrast, the chain of registered sale deeds and revenue mutations consistently showed possession passing to the defendants' side, ending with the appellant cultivating the land. Concluding the High Court erred in relying on cancelled revenue entries to find possession in the plaintiffs' favour, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside that finding, and dismissed the plaintiffs' suit in its entirety.

Lesson Learnt

In property disputes, bare entries in revenue records (like khasra records) cannot establish possession if those very entries have been officially cancelled as incorrect by a competent authority: courts must verify the current validity of such records rather than taking them at face value, and a party claiming possession without title still needs solid, uncancelled documentary proof to succeed.

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

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