Supreme Court Settles 5-Decade-Old Land Dispute

New Delhi: Bringing closure to a land dispute spanning more than half a century in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Bombay High Court order related to properties once vested in the erstwhile Portuguese government.

In its 78-page judgment, a bench of Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and N. Kotiswar Singh observed: “What is perhaps most striking about the instant case is not merely that this court is called upon to adjudicate a dispute originating over half a century ago. Rather, it is the deeper irony that, even after seventy-eight years of independence, this court remains engaged in resolving a controversy arising out of land rights conferred by colonial powers that once exploited this nation’s wealth and resources.”

The court clarified that any critique it expressed regarding colonial legacies should not be construed as undermining the legitimacy of the appellants’ claims or the rights they sought to assert.

The appeals stemmed from a February 17, 2005, High Court judgment concerning the rescission of land grants in Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The lands, originally vested in the Portuguese government, had been granted to the predecessors of appellant Divyagnakumari Harisinh Parmar and others between 1923 and 1930 for agricultural cultivation, subject to specific conditions.

These grants were rescinded by the collector of Dadra and Nagar Haveli on April 30, 1974, triggering decades of litigation between the State and the appellants.

The Supreme Court held that the governing law for determining the appellants’ land rights was Government Regulation 985, known as the “Organic Structure of the Lands of Nagar Haveli,” brought into force on September 22, 1919 to regulate Portuguese revenue administration. The inquiry, it said, must be confined to its provisions.

The bench further ruled that the High Court’s reversal of concurrent findings of the lower courts did not exceed its jurisdiction under Section 100 of the CPC. It rejected the appellants’ pleas of waiver, acquiescence, delay, impossibility, and condonation, noting they had no “legal or factual basis.”

“None of these principles render the collector’s order dated April 30, 1974, unsustainable,” the court said, adding that the order was not tainted by mala fides and could not be seen as intended to deprive the appellants of benefits under the 1971 Land Reforms Regulation.

Dismissing the appeals as devoid of merit, the bench vacated the status quo order of February 24, 2006.