Mortgage decree stalled by a 1983 patta: Andhra Pradesh HC revives execution, orders ruling on saleability
Justice Purushottam Kumar Chintalapudi set aside a Narasaraopet executing court order that threw out a decree-holder because the mortgaged plot was assigned land, and sent the matter back for a reasoned finding on whether the house site can lawfully be sold.
A man who won a mortgage suit in Narasaraopet in 2011, obtained a final decree in 2015 and went to execute it in 2017 was turned away at the last step because the plot he held as security turned out to be a government-assigned house site. The Andhra Pradesh High Court has now set that order aside. The executing court, Justice Purushottam Kumar Chintalapudi held, could neither reject the objection because the assignment patta surfaced only at the execution stage, nor refuse execution on the strength of that patta without working out what the law actually permits. The Execution Petition goes back for a reasoned decision.
A suit on a mortgage, and an objection that kept returning
Ravuri Govinda Raju, 36, of Varavakatta in Narasaraopet, lent money to Ravutla Koteswara Rao, 58, of Pathuru in the same town, against a registered mortgage of a small plot. When the loan went unpaid he filed O.S. No. 179 of 2008 before the Principal Senior Civil Judge, Narasaraopet. The suit was partly decreed and a preliminary decree passed on 17 February 2011. He then filed I.A. No. 577 of 2015 for a final decree, which was granted on 30 November 2015. The borrower challenged neither decree.
The property is Plot No. 37 in T.S. Nos. 715/1 and 715/15, in the Pathuru locality near Dr Oguri Kotaiah's Hospital, Old Ward No. 1 of Narasaraopet municipality. It measures 106.66 square yards, bounded on the east by Rautla Veera Appaiah's house, on the west by Pedukandla Venkata Ratnachary's house, a municipal road to the south and a drainage canal to the north. The execution schedule describes it as a vacant site on which a daba house was built.
The decree-holder filed E.P. No. 7 of 2017 to bring the plot to sale. The judgment-debtor appeared and objected that the government had assigned the land to him on 14 August 1983, that it was prohibited from registration and alienation, and that he had no saleable interest in it. He produced a certificate from the Joint Sub-Registrar, Narasaraopet, to that effect. Only now, in execution, did he also place the assignment patta on record.
The objection was not new. During the suit the trial court had framed an issue on whether the mortgaged property was assigned land, noted that the patta had not been produced, and left the point open while partly decreeing the suit. At the final-decree stage the borrower raised it again, calling the plot government land. The court found the objection unproved: apart from the plea in the counter there was no evidence that the property was government land, and a final decree was passed in terms of the preliminary decree.
Why the executing court dismissed the E.P.
On 29 June 2017 the Principal Civil Judge (Senior Division), Narasaraopet, dismissed the Execution Petition. The court accepted that the land in Survey Nos. 715/1 and 715/15 had been assigned to the judgment-debtor in 1983 and that it was prohibited from registration and alienation.
The decree-holder had relied on an earlier High Court ruling, Vemula Ankamma Rao v. Nomula Prasada Rao (C.R.P. No. 4321 of 2011, decided on 29 January 2016). The executing court distinguished it: in that case the property had been brought to execution after ten years from the assignment, whereas here the decree-holder had produced no record to show the plot could be alienated once ten years had passed. The court noted the mortgage in the decree-holder's favour but held that no document showed the bar on alienation was limited to ten years. With the Sub-Registrar's certificate on one side and nothing from the decree-holder on the other, the E.P. was dismissed.
What each side argued in the High Court
The decree-holder came to the High Court in a revision under Article 227 of the Constitution. His counsel, V.S.K. Rama Rao, argued that the patta itself barred alienation only for ten years. The assignment was made in 1983, the restriction ran out in 1993, and the mortgage was executed in 1998, well after that. The borrower had taken the assigned-land objection in the suit, where Issue No. 2 was framed on it, and had then sat on the preliminary and final decrees without appeal. He could not reopen the same point in execution. Counsel relied on Venkataramanappa and others v. T.M. Chalapathi (C.R.P. No. 4668 of 2004, reported in 2007 (6) ALD 81), where the High Court held that once ten years had elapsed from the grant of the patta, the judgment-debtor had acquired a saleable interest and the property could be sold. The executing court, he said, had wrongly placed on the decree-holder the burden of proving the property was saleable.
For the judgment-debtor, T.V. Sri Devi defended the order. The land was assigned land, the law prohibited its alienation, the survey numbers appeared in the list of prohibited properties, and no one could sell it. The ruling the decree-holder cited did not apply. She accepted that her client had no other property from which the decree could be satisfied, but said that did not change the position: the court simply could not execute the decree by selling the plot.
Condition No. 9 and the statute behind it
The judge began with what the decrees had settled. The decree-holder had won the suit, obtained a preliminary decree and then a final decree, and neither was challenged. Those decrees, he said, crystallised the decree-holder's right to realise the amount in accordance with law. As a secured creditor he had come to execution to sell the mortgaged property.
Then came the patta, now on record in translation. Condition No. 9 gives the government a right to take back the site if the assignee transfers, sells, leases or mortgages it before ten years from the date of the patta, or without the prior written permission of the Revenue Divisional Officer. The condition carves out an exception for development and for loans raised from banks by mortgaging the site. The patta also required the assignee to build a house within six months of its issue on 14 August 1983. No objection suggested he had failed to do so, and the execution schedule itself records a daba house on the plot. The property, the judge held, is a house site with a house on it, not agricultural land.
The governing statute is the Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act, 1977, Act No. 9 of 1977, as amended. The judgment sets out Section 3 in full. Sub-section (1) provides that land assigned to a landless poor person for cultivation or as a house site shall not be transferred and shall be deemed never to have been transferred, so that no right vests in the transferee. Sub-section (2) bars any transfer or acquisition of assigned land by purchase, gift, lease, mortgage, exchange or otherwise, with an exception for leases to the Andhra Pradesh Green Energy Corporation Ltd. Sub-section (2A) applies the same bar to assigned house sites until twenty years from the date of assignment. Sub-section (3) declares any contravening transfer null and void. Sub-section (4) extends the section to transactions of that kind made in execution of a decree or order of a civil court.
The judge also traced the 2023 amendment. The Andhra Pradesh Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2023, promulgated on 27 July 2023 and published on 31 July 2023, amended Section 2(1) to prescribe a period of twenty years from assignment for agricultural land and ten years for house sites. It substituted Section 3(2) to bar transfer of agricultural assigned land for twenty years, after which the assignee or legal heirs may alienate it under the prescribed procedure without further reference to the government.
Because Section 3(4) reaches court-ordered transactions, the judge held, whether this plot can be sold in execution has to be answered with reference to the Act, the conditions of the patta and the amendments that apply to this particular assignment. He quoted the passage from Venkataramanappa in which a Deputy Mandal Revenue Officer conceded that after ten years “the assignee gets salable interest over the property”, and noted that the mortgage here, registered on 16 July 1998, came after the ten-year period in Condition No. 9 had run. But that contention, he said, still had to be tested against the statutory provisions on assigned house sites, including the one on execution sales.
Section 47 and the limits of an executing court
The judge's central finding was about what the executing court was required to do with an objection raised late. Neither party had produced the patta during the preliminary-decree or final-decree proceedings. The trial court had passed both decrees on the material then available and left the assignment issue open. The judgment-debtor produced the patta only in execution and offered no explanation for the delay.
An executing court cannot go behind the decree. But it must, the judge held, consider a properly raised objection on whether the decree can lawfully be executed against the schedule property. That is a question under Section 47 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The objection could not be thrown out merely because the patta appeared at the execution stage. Equally, execution could not be refused solely on the patta and the Sub-Registrar's certificate without determining their legal effect under the Act. The executing court had done the second thing. It dismissed the E.P. on the footing that the land was assigned and that the certificate showed registration was prohibited, and faulted the decree-holder for not proving the restriction lasted only ten years, without assessing either document against the governing statute.
The May 2026 government order
One more document entered the picture after the executing court's order. G.O.Ms.No. 306 of the Revenue (Lands-I) Department, dated 25 May 2026, permits registration of documents relating to assigned house sites with houses built on them, subject to conditions. The G.O. records that registering officers had been raising doubts about such documents, particularly where the properties still figured in the Prohibited Properties List maintained under Section 22-A of the Registration Act, 1908, and that denial of registration despite the completion of ten years from assignment was causing hardship to genuine beneficiaries.
Registration under the G.O. requires the original assignment patta or a certified copy, proof that ten years have elapsed since assignment, a house tax receipt or other record showing a house has been built, identification of the property by plot and survey numbers, and verification that the executant is the original assignee or a legal heir. Where those conditions are met, registration is permitted notwithstanding inclusion in the prohibited list.
The judge drew a line around it. The G.O. concerns registration. Whether a mortgage or a court-ordered sale is permissible under the Assigned Lands Act is a separate question, and the G.O. cannot by itself be treated as conclusive of saleability or executability. Since the executing court had leaned on the Sub-Registrar's certificate, however, it must now consider whether this plot satisfies the G.O.'s conditions and what effect, if any, that has on the objection.
Order
The Civil Revision Petition was allowed and the order of 29 June 2017 in E.P. No. 7 of 2017 in O.S. No. 179 of 2008 was set aside. The Execution Petition stands restored to the file of the Principal Civil Judge (Senior Division), Narasaraopet, for fresh consideration in accordance with law.
The executing court is to examine the applicability of Section 3(4) of the Act, the restriction in Condition No. 9 of the patta, the amendments applicable to this assignment, and the effect of G.O.Ms.No. 306 dated 25 May 2026, and must decide under Section 47 CPC whether the decree can lawfully be executed by selling the plot. Before ordering or proceeding with a sale under Order XXI Rules 64 and 66 CPC it must record a reasoned finding on whether the proposed sale is permissible in law. The judge made clear that his observations were confined to this petition and that the executing court is free to proceed uninfluenced by them. There was no order as to costs, pending interlocutory applications were closed and the interim order granted earlier was vacated. The matter was reserved on 27 July 2026 and pronounced on 26 October 2026.