She said the house had been gifted to her, and that she had also held it against the owner all along. Both cannot be true

The Delhi High Court dismisses an appeal against a decree for possession, holding that a claim of title from a date and adverse possession from the same date cancel each other — and that long occupation, without more, stays permissive.

Adverse possession is pleaded in the alternative more often than it is pleaded properly, and the alternative is usually the problem. A defendant who says the property was given to her is asserting a right derived from the owner. A defendant who says she has held it adversely is asserting a right held against the owner. Run together from the same starting date, the two pleas do not reinforce each other; they cancel.

On 22 September 2026 Justice Neena Bansal Krishna applied that principle in a regular first appeal under Section 96 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The suit and the decree

The plaintiff is the owner of a property at Moti Ram Marg, Shahdara, Delhi. She instituted a civil suit for possession together with damages of ₹5,00,000 for unauthorised occupation and further damages at ₹15,000 per month until possession was handed over.

Her case was that the defendant and her husband had been engaged for domestic work and paid a salary, and had been permitted to occupy the property without payment of rent, damages or other charges, on an understanding about the terms of that occupation.

The District Judge decreed the suit on 9 July 2024 for possession, and awarded ₹1,00,000 towards damages and mesne profits with future interest at 6% per annum until possession was delivered. The defendant appealed.

Two inconsistent cases

In her written statement the defendant denied that any salary had been paid or that she had been appointed for domestic work. Her substantive case throughout was that the suit property had been orally gifted to her and her husband by the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s husband, and that she had thereafter occupied it as owner.

Alongside that, she claimed adverse possession, relying on the length of her occupation.

The Court held that the two could not stand together. Having asserted ownership derived from the plaintiff, she could not from the same point in time simultaneously claim possession hostile to and in denial of the plaintiff’s title. Nor had any later date of hostile assertion been pleaded or proved.

That accords, the judgment records, with the Supreme Court’s view in Narasamma v. A. Krishnappa (Dead) through LRs, AIR 2020 SC 4178: a claim of title from a particular date and a plea of adverse possession from the very same date cannot simultaneously be sustained, and on failure of the plea of title it becomes necessary to independently plead and prove the date from which possession turned hostile — a burden, here, not even attempted.

Permissive occupation does not change by itself

The Court then dealt with the possession as it actually stood on the findings.

The defendant’s occupation was permissive in origin, arising through her association with the plaintiff and her family. There was no evidence of any later point at which that permissive occupation was repudiated and converted into a hostile assertion of title. And mere continuance in possession thereafter, even for a considerable period, would not by itself alter its juridical character.

That is the proposition most often misunderstood by occupiers who have been in a property for decades. Time does not convert a permission into a right. What converts it is an act of repudiation — open, hostile and to the knowledge of the owner — after which the statutory period begins to run. Without that moment, thirty years of occupation is thirty years of permission.

The Court put the same point in terms of proof: long possession, however protracted, does not by itself ripen into title unless shown to have been hostile, to the knowledge of the true owner, for the entire statutory period; mere continuance of possession, without more, remains possession simpliciter.

It noted that the Supreme Court had recently reiterated this in Bhag Singh (D) through Mahant Kashmir Singh v. Basant Kaur (D) through LRs., 2026 INSC 983 — long possession may establish physical occupation, but does not by itself establish adverse possession; what must additionally be proved is a conscious and hostile assertion of ownership in denial of the rights of the true owner.

The oral gift

The gift claim fared no better on the evidence. The Court examined the circumstances in which the alleged oral gift was said to have been made, and found nothing supporting it — as it found no document showing payment of salary or appointment either, a point that cut against the plaintiff’s version of the relationship but did not assist the defendant in establishing her own.

The burden of proving the gift lay on the person asserting it, and an assertion of an oral gift, unsupported by any document and denied by the alleged donor, does not discharge it.

What happened to the money

Two developments outside the merits shaped the final order.

Possession of the suit property had already been delivered to the plaintiff on 26 November 2024 in execution proceedings, so the principal relief had been worked out before the appeal was decided.

And on 7 May 2025 counsel for the plaintiff stated in Court, on instructions, that she was not interested in receiving any damages or mesne profits from the appellant. The plaintiff thereby gave up the monetary relief granted to her under the decree — the ₹1,00,000 with interest — and the Court recorded that she had given up the right to seek its recovery.

So the appellant loses the house she had occupied and pays nothing for the years of occupation.

The order

Finding no merit in the appeal, the Court dismissed it and disposed of the pending applications.

For anyone drafting a written statement in a possession suit, the judgment is a compact warning about pleading in the alternative. Alternatives are permissible where they are genuinely alternative — but a defence that the owner gave me the property and a defence that I took it from the owner are not alternatives running from the same date. They are contradictory, and a court that notices will treat the contradiction as telling against both.