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Shyam Lal v. Deepa Dass Chela Ram Chela Garib Dass

Civil Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Civil Appeal No. 4245 of 2012, order of 27 February 2015)Decided 27 Feb 2015
Civil Appeal No. 4245 of 2012
Justice M.Y. Eqbal · Justice Shiva Kirti Singh

Background

This is a referral order, not a final judgment. Shyam Lal claimed 27 to 28 years of possession of agricultural land as a tenant. The respondent said the lease expired in 2005 and that he was now a trespasser.

Decision Breakdown

This is a referral order, not a final judgment. On its own reasoning, the Bench concluded that an agricultural tenant does not automatically become a trespasser when a fixed-term lease expires, and can be evicted only through the procedure in Section 9 of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953. This conflicted with the Court's earlier decision in Sukhdev Singh vs. Puran, which had held the opposite. To maintain judicial discipline, the Bench referred the matter to a larger Bench and directed the Registry to place the record before the Chief Justice of India.

Lesson Learnt

There is no final ruling yet on when an agricultural tenant becomes a trespasser after a lease expires. A Bench that disagrees with an earlier Bench of equal strength refers the question to a larger Bench.

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

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