Summary Revenue Proceedings Require Greater Adherence To Procedure: Allahabad High Court Sets Aside Land Map Correction Orders

The Allahabad High Court has held that revenue authorities acting under Section 28 of the U.P. Land Revenue Act, 1901 cannot, while correcting a village map, act on a disputed measurement and take away part of one plot to make good an alleged shortfall in the plot next to it.

The summary character of such proceedings, it held, calls for closer compliance with the statutory procedure, not a relaxation of it.

Section 28 of the U.P. Land Revenue Act, 1901 deals with the maintenance of maps and field-books and requires errors in them to be corrected by the prescribed procedure.

Justice Irshad Ali held,

“The limited nature of the jurisdiction under Section 28 requires greater adherence to the statutory procedure; it does not dilute such requirement.”

Petitioners purchased Gata No.764 at Village Nara, Tehsil Musafir Khana, District Sultanpur by a registered sale deed dated 24.11.1990. Suits over construction on the land were pending between them and the owners of adjoining Gata No.763.

Respondent no.5, Samar Bahadur Singh, who had acquired land in Gata No.763, moved the Additional District Magistrate (Administration)/Upper Collector, Sultanpur under Section 28, claiming that the area of Gata No.763 stood recorded as less and that of Gata No.764 as more. Going by a report dated 04.08.2001 of the Mukhya Anurakshak, Chakbandi, the Additional District Magistrate held by order dated 20.07.2004 that the shortfall in Gata No.763 could be made up from the excess in Gata No.764. The Additional Commissioner, Faizabad rejected the revision on 03.07.2006.

The petitioners had objected to the adjustment of roughly 4 Biswa 1 Dhur out of their plot, pointing out that a pakka house already stood on the portion being shifted, that the land had been measured triangularly rather than straight from north to south, and that the dispute was before the civil court.

Counsel for respondent nos.5, 6 and 8 submitted that Section 28 is confined to correction of the map and field-book, decides no question of title or possession, and cannot by itself work as dispossession. He relied on Triveni Bahadur Singh and others Vs. State of U.P. and others and Rajjab Ali and others Vs. Additional Commissioner Faizabad and others.

Both decisions, the Court accepted, restate that such proceedings are summary and that title is for the civil court, but that did not place the orders beyond scrutiny.

“the said proposition does not mean that every order passed under Section 28 is immune from judicial review or that the revenue authorities may, in the guise of correcting a map, act upon an unverified or disputed measurement in a manner which materially affects the identity and extent of land claimed by another party.”

Triveni Bahadur Singh, the Court held, does not allow an authority to mechanically act on a report where the party disputes the measurement, points to a house on the affected portion and brings the pending civil suit to notice. It added that Rajjab Ali turned on a plea never raised before the revisional authority, unlike the objections taken here in the proceedings themselves.

Taking the respondents at their own case, the Court held that the authorities had to stay within the narrow question of whether the map carried a genuine error.

“They could not, under the guise of such correction, proceed upon a disputed assumption that the alleged deficiency of Gata No.763 necessarily represented excess land in Gata No.764 and thereafter deduct a specific portion from the petitioners' plot.”

Neither the order dated 20.07.2004 nor the revisional order, it found, showed that the objections had been examined in their proper perspective, the authorities having gone substantially by the 2001 report.

Declining any finding on title, which it held would prejudice the pending civil suits, the Court allowed the petition, quashed both orders and remanded the matter for fresh consideration after notice to all affected parties, with a fresh measurement if necessary and a reasoned order on the objections, preferably within six months.