The Telangana High Court ruled that revenue authorities must clearly cite the legal provisions granting them jurisdiction when issuing proceedings or notices, setting aside an Alwal tahsildar’s land order for lacking statutory basis.
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court had made it clear that proceedings or notices issued by the revenue authorities must specify the statute or law under which they were issued. The court said that the tahsildar or revenue authorities have to mention the law which conferred on them the jurisdiction to issue the proceedings.
Stating this, Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy of the Telangana High Court set aside proceedings issued by the Alwal tahsildar of Medchal-Malkajgiri district, who in 2019 had declared around five acres and 30 guntas of land in Tholla Kharkana (Old Survey No.380) as government land. The proceedings did not mention the jurisdiction of the tahsildar nor the provision of law empowering the official to arrive at the decision, in a dispute involving private parties.
The private parties had claimed the land was abadi, whereas the survey department stated it was private land. When the issue went to court, it had issued directions to the tahsildar to issue notices to the private parties and take a decision based on their submissions.
The Alwal tahsildar, however, issued proceedings declaring the land as government property. The private parties challenged it before the High Court, and their counsel submitted that the impugned proceedings were passed without jurisdiction and had not stated under which statute they had been initiated. Counsel for the private parties said that the order of the court was wrongly construed by the tahsildar who had proceeded to decide the title of the land in summary proceedings.
Katram Muralidhar Reddy, government pleader for revenue, submitted that the land recorded as ‘abadi’ were to be treated as government land. He contended that merely because the proceedings were issued under the Telangana Revenue Summons Act, 1869, it would not vitiate the proceedings. However, the tahsildar was not able to convince the court.
