New Delhi: A family from Haridwar in Uttarakhand finally received closure after the Supreme Court settled a 70-year-old land dispute in its favour.
Four generations of the family had got embroiled in the litigation over the last seven decades.
The bench of Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice N V Anjaria decided the dispute over 15.5 bighas in Narsipur Kalan village, purchased by ancestors of appellant Sarafat Ali through a sale deed of June 4, 1957.
The family has been in possession of the land ever since, but trouble erupted after the validity of the registered sale deed was challenged..
The family secured mutation of the land in its favour in 1984 after one of the sellers withdrew his objection. During consolidation proceedings in 1991, they sought recognition of their rights as Bhumidhar. Though the consolidation officer initially allowed their claim and a subsequent compromise in 1993 also supported their possession, the matter was reopened after objections by other co-tenure holders, as reported by NDTV.
The consolidation officer, after a full hearing, rejected the appellants’ claim in 1999, holding that the sale deed had not been properly proved and was void under Section 154 of the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act. The appellate and revisional authorities upheld the decision, and the High Court dismissed the appellants’ writ petition in 2017, affirming the findings.
The findings of the lower courts rested on two pillars. First, that the sale deed contravened Section 154 of the Abolition Act, rendering it void. Second, that the execution of the deed was not proved because the attesting witness Baru described his residence as “Nasirpur Kalan” in his 1995 statement, whereas the certified copy of the deed described him as a resident of “Nihandpur Suthari.”
The Supreme Court held that the High Court and the consolidation authorities committed a manifest error in treating the sale deed dated June 4, 1957, as void and in disregarding it on the basis of immaterial discrepancies relating to the attesting witness.
It is not even the pleaded case of the respondents that the sale deed was forged, executed under coercion, impersonation or fraudulent misrepresentation, the top court noted.
“The challenge was not founded upon any allegation that the executants were deceived as to the character of the document, nor that the transaction suffered from fraud of such nature as would render the instrument void ab initio. At the highest, the objections raised pertained only to peripheral discrepancies in proof. Such circumstances, by no stretch, could justify disregarding a registered conveyance carrying a presumption of validity in law,” the Court held.
The appellants have consistently asserted possession pursuant to the sale deed, and significantly, such assertion has not been effectively controverted by the respondents, the Court noted.
“The cumulative effect of the registered sale deed, the presumption attaching thereto, the absence of any substantive challenge alleging forgery or fraud, and the failure of the respondents to elicit any material contradiction in the testimony of the attesting witness, clearly render the findings recorded by the Consolidation Authorities and affirmed by the High Court unsustainable in law,” the bench observed.
“What initially commenced as proceedings for mutation gradually traversed into the realm of the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, and the consolidation framework, though its odyssey across multiple forums only culminated in futility, with the authorities below concurrently holding that the appellants had failed to prove the execution of the said sale deed, thereby compelling them to seek refuge before this court,” the Supreme Court observed while setting aside concurrent findings of the trial court and High Court.
