Ask a Maharashtra farmer whether the land in his satbara extract is really his, and he will probably say yes. Ask a court, and the answer is more careful. A satbara record who is in possession, and a mutation entry records that a transaction was reported. Neither, in law, proves ownership. That gap underlies a large share of land litigation in the State, and the proposed Maharashtra Land Titling Bill aims to close it by having the State certify ownership rather than merely record possession.
The Bill is not Maharashtra's invention. It appears to follow the Union government's Model Land Titling Act, drafted after NITI Aayog flagged that land disputes make up roughly two-thirds of the country's civil litigation. Several states have picked up the model in different forms, and one has already lived through its consequences. Andhra Pradesh enacted its own Land Titling Act in 2022, brought it into force in October 2023, and repealed it in July 2024, after advocates boycotted the district judiciary for months and the High Court declined to stay a law whose constitutional validity remained under challenge. Maharashtra's draft has reportedly been published for objections.
What the Bill would do
A Land Authority would prepare a survey record and a draft Record of Titles for notified areas. Claims and objections would be invited. Undisputed entries would be recorded, and disputes would go to a Land Dispute Resolution Officer, then to a Land Titling Appellate Tribunal, and finally to a special bench of the High Court. Three years after the record is notified, an entry becomes conclusive proof of title. Civil courts are barred from deciding matters these authorities can decide.
Why it deserves support
At present, a buyer must trace ownership through decades of documents, and one forged link can undo the chain. A unified, public register would make double sales and false mutations harder. Banks could lend against land without private title searches, and verification would become faster and cheaper. If Maharashtra's civil dockets carry anything close to the national share NITI Aayog has pointed to, a working register would not just ease conveyancing; it would ease the load judges currently spend re-litigating title in disputes that have nothing else in issue. The model also carries real safeguards. An entry obtained by fraud is void from the start. An entry under challenge does not become final until the challenge is decided. Disputes already pending in court stay there, and a High Court appeal is available.
Where it raises concern
The forum: Ownership disputes would leave the civil court. The Title Registration Officer needs no law degree, and the Dispute Resolution Officer, of Deputy Collector rank in the reported draft, needs no judicial qualification. The Tribunal has a district-judge-level chair, but its other member is an administrative officer, and both serve three-year terms on Government-set conditions. In Union of India v. R. Gandhi, President, Madras Bar Association, (2010) 11 SCC 1, the Supreme Court held that a tribunal replacing courts must match them in independence, tenure and manner of appointment, and it returned to the same theme in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, (2014) 10 SCC 1, striking down conditions of service that left tribunal members exposed to executive control. This was exactly the objection that sank the Andhra Pradesh law: the Act barred civil courts and routed appeals only to the High Court, bypassing the district judiciary altogether, and Bar associations treated this as a design flaw serious enough to justify an extended boycott of court work. The Andhra Pradesh High Court, while declining to stay the Act outright because its constitutional validity was still being tested, kept civil courts open for pending land matters and left the door ajar for petitioners to return the moment implementation began. The State abolished the law within a year of that order, before the forum question was even settled by a final judgment. The Supreme Court's later rulings, including Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd. (2020) 6 SCC 1, on the qualifications and service conditions of tribunal members, only sharpen the point: a forum that decides who owns land is deciding a civil right as final as any court decides, and the Constitution does not let the manner of its constitution matter less because the subject is land revenue rather than company law.
Three years and it is final: The model gives no extra time to minors, persons of unsound mind, or heirs living abroad, although the Limitation Act, 1963 has long allowed for them. Picture a family in a Vidarbha village whose grown children work overseas. A three-year window that starts with a gazette notification may close before any of them hears of it. Publication counts as notice to everyone, and the appeal periods that follow are short, from thirty to ninety days.
Unrecorded transactions: A transaction not recorded under the Act is void and inadmissible in evidence, which is harsher than the Registration Act, 1908. The model does not mention Section 53A of the Transfer of Property Act, which protects a buyer in possession under a written agreement, so the position of buyers relying on unregistered agreements is unclear.
Court orders wait on certificates: Parties with pending suits, decrees, mortgages or probates must report them and obtain a Certificate of Recording. If they fail, proceedings are put on hold and decrees cannot be executed. The cost of a missed deadline falls on the litigant.
Finality without a guarantee: Title becomes conclusive, but the State may introduce compensation for wrong entries only if it chooses. Corrections are limited to clerical errors sought within three months. Systems of this kind normally pair finality with a compensation fund.
What can be fixed
Much of this can be repaired without abandoning the Bill. Individual notice and village hearings can be added through the Rules, and extra time for minors and absent heirs by amendment. Compensation needs only a change from “may” to “shall", backed by a fund. The compliance periods for court proceedings can be lengthened.
The forum question is harder, because it lies in the statute itself, and it is the one Andhra Pradesh's experience shows a State cannot afford to leave unresolved. Two options would answer it. Ownership disputes could go to specialist civil benches or fast-track courts, leaving the revenue machinery to prepare records rather than adjudicate over them. Or a tribunal could be kept but made fully judicial, with secure tenure and appointment on terms the Supreme Court has already laid down, and the bar on civil courts narrowed so that fraud and disability claims can still reach them. Either route costs less, in political and legal capital, than enacting a law only to repeal it once implementation begins.
A reliable land register is worth having. But certainty is valuable only if the process behind it is fair. A law that makes entries final should ensure that people get notice, that the vulnerable are not shut out, that errors are compensated, and that ownership is decided by a forum meeting the Supreme Court's standards. The Andhra Pradesh precedent shows what happens when a State skips that groundwork: not a faster, cheaper title system, but a year of court boycotts and, eventually, repeal. Maharashtra's draft can still be changed, and lawyers, Bar associations and landholders should read it and send in objections while that is easy to do.
Author is an Advocate practicing at Bombay High Court. Views are personal.