Karnataka HC quashes land committee whose chairman, a defeated poll rival, had proposed himself in a letter
A division bench set aside the 2023 notification creating an additional committee under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, holding that a Tahsildar affidavit filed nearly three years later cannot show the State formed the required opinion, and told the State to frame criteria for choosing its chairmen.
A defeated candidate wrote to the Revenue Minister asking for an extra land committee in the very constituency he had lost. He proposed himself as its chairman and named three members. The State then notified exactly that line-up.
The Karnataka High Court has now quashed the notification. A division bench of Justice D K Singh and Justice H. Shanthi Bhushan allowed in part the writ appeal of Byndoor MLA Gururaj Gantihole on 2 November 2026.
The judgment was written by Justice Shanthi Bhushan. It also directs the State to frame objective criteria for choosing the chairman of any additional committee.
Two committees for one constituency
Section 94-A of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 provides for regularising unauthorised occupation of government land. Sub-section (1) requires the State to constitute a committee for each Assembly constituency, with an MLA as one of its members.
Sub-section (2-A) lets the State add one or more additional committees "if it is of the opinion that it is necessary". Rule 108-EE of the Karnataka Land Revenue Rules, 1966 says such a committee has a chairman nominated by the State, three other nominees and the Tahsildar.
Section 94-A was inserted in 1991 by Amending Act No. 2, and sub-section (2-A) was added in 1994 by Amending Act No. 33. Rule 108-E fixes the principal committee's membership: the MLA, three State nominees including a woman and a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and the Tahsildar.
Mr Gantihole won Byndoor in the 2023 Assembly election. A notification of 2 November 2023 made him chairman of the Section 94-A(1) committee.
Before that committee could sit, the State issued a notification of 4 December 2023 creating an additional committee. Its chairman was K. Gopal Poojary, who had contested against Mr Gantihole and lost.
A further notification of 26 December 2023 split the work. Mr Gantihole's committee got 12,313 pending applications, and the additional committee got 23,983.
What the petitioner argued
Mr Gantihole sought to quash both notifications in Writ Petition No. 4097 of 2024. He said nothing showed the State had formed the opinion the statute demands. The lopsided allocation and his rival's appointment, he argued, showed the committee existed to undercut the elected MLA.
He also challenged Rule 108-EE under Article 14. It lets the State appoint "a person" as chairman with no qualification, rank or guiding criterion.
The State, represented by Additional Advocate General I. Tharanath Poojary, said the opinion on necessity was a matter of subjective satisfaction. It pointed to heavy pendency in Byndoor and Vandse hoblis.
Mr Gopal Poojary, respondent No. 4, argued that Mr Gantihole had no locus to challenge the December notification. He said losing the election disqualified no one, because the Rules prescribe no such bar, and the claim of political motive was baseless.
He put pendency at about 17,000 to 18,000 applications in the area of the petitioner's committee and about 14,000 in Vandse Hobli. Mr Gantihole, he added, could not claim an exclusive right to decide every land application in the constituency.
On the Rule, the respondents said it had been in force since 27 September 1994 and the challenge was belated. They also argued it could not be invalid merely because the additional committee's composition differed from the principal committee's.
Senior Counsel Aruna Shyam M. appeared for Mr Gantihole, for advocate Shivani Shetty. Additional Government Advocate S. H. Raghavendra assisted the State, and P. D. Surana appeared for respondents 4 and 5.
The single judge relied on a later affidavit
On 4 August 2026 the single judge dismissed the petition. He accepted figures from an affidavit dated 29 July 2026 filed by the Tahsildar of Kundapura and held that pendency justified the committee.
He also treated the State's view on necessity as a matter for the Government that did not call for interference under Article 226. The challenge to Rule 108-EE was recorded as not pressed and left open.
The Tahsildar's affidavit said that of 13,253 applications in Byndoor Hobli, only 8 had been granted and 2,692 remained pending. In Vandse Hobli, of 23,722 applications, none had been granted and 1,889 were pending. In all, 4,581 of 36,975 applications were pending.
The test for an "opinion"
The division bench began with the statute. It read Section 94-A(2-A) as making the State's opinion on necessity a condition precedent to the power. The State must form it, and it must be for the purpose of granting land under sub-section (4).
The court drew on Supreme Court rulings that it cited itself: Barium Chemicals Ltd. v. Company Law Board, Bhikhubhai Vithlabhai Patel v. State of Gujarat and Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner. Between them they say a subjective opinion still needs material behind it.
From Bhikhubhai the bench took the point that an opinion "cannot be on imaginary grounds, wishful thinking" and must rest on material that has a rational connection to it. The court does not weigh how much material there is. It asks only whether the material is relevant, and not remote, speculative or extraneous.
The bench's own framing of the issue was narrow. The question was not whether the State should have exercised its discretion differently, but whether the decision-making process met the law.
“Whether the petitioner has made out any grounds to interfere with the order passed by the learned Single Judge?” (para 23)
Why the affidavit could not help
The bench found nothing in the 4 December 2023 notification, or in the record available then, to show that the State had considered material or formed an opinion on necessity. The respondents' main exhibit was the 2026 affidavit.
That affidavit, the court said, could describe the position of applications on the day it was filed. It could not establish what the State had before it nearly three years earlier.
The court applied the rule from Mohinder Singh Gill that a public order is judged by the reasons in it and cannot be improved later by affidavit. On this the bench held that:
“The decision cannot subsequently be supported by explanations or material introduced after the event.” (para 44)
The single judge, it concluded, ought not to have used the affidavit figures to find that the opinion had been formed on 4 December 2023.
The letters and the line-up
The bench then looked at what the record did hold. Mr Gopal Poojary had written to the then Revenue Minister asking for an additional committee, saying about 33,000 applications were pending in Byndoor Constituency.
In the same letter he recommended himself as chairman and proposed respondents 5 to 7 as members. The Minister endorsed it, noting that appropriate action would follow.
A second letter, dated 24 November 2023, came from the Minister for Women and Child Development to the Revenue Minister. It made the same recommendations and also carried an endorsement.
The notification of 4 December 2023 named Mr Poojary as chairman and respondents 5 to 7 as members, "precisely as proposed" in those letters. The court said this raised a serious question whether the State applied its mind independently or simply acted on requests.
No supporting data stood behind the figures in the letters. Without it, the bench said, they were only the views and requests of their authors, and could not replace the material that Section 94-A(2-A) requires the State to consider.
"An indirect route"
The bench did not stop at the missing record. It read the sequence as one in which a candidate who had failed to win the seat sought authority through an additional committee instead.
What had not been secured at the polls, it said, "appears to have been pursued through an indirect route" (para 54). The word "appears" matters, because the finding rests on the sequence of events shown in the record.
A desire for office, the court added, is not relevant material for forming the opinion under Section 94-A(2-A). Statutory power must serve the purpose for which it was conferred, not personal or extraneous interests.
The bench was satisfied that the State had not considered relevant material or formed the required opinion. The notification was issued in breach of a mandatory precondition. The consequential notification of 26 December 2023 fell with it.
Rule 108-EE: guidelines, not strike-down
The court then turned to Rule 108-EE. It noted that the principal committee and the additional committee do the same job, and four of their five members are chosen in similar ways.
The difference lies in the first slot. Rule 108-E(1)(a) requires the MLA for the major part of the taluk to sit on the committee and bears on who chairs it. Rule 108-EE(1)(a) has no such requirement and lets the State appoint "a person".
The bench said the Legislature required the MLA's presence because an elected representative is placed to understand the interests of the constituency. Two bodies with the same function but different compositions, and an open-ended power to name the chairman of one, invited arbitrariness.
It reasoned that the chairman of an additional committee should have experience and competence comparable to what is expected of an MLA. The court nevertheless declined to strike the Rule down.
Instead it directed the State to frame guidelines. These must set objective criteria, covering administrative ability, relevant experience and integrity, so that appointments rest on relevant considerations and not extraneous ones.
Order
The appeal was allowed in part. The single judge's order of 4 August 2026 was set aside to the extent indicated, and the notifications of 4 December 2023 and 26 December 2023 were quashed.
The operative part records that the challenge to the constitutional validity of the Rule, which the order numbers 108-W, was not pressed and the question is left open. It also directs the State to frame guidelines for the chairman's appointment under Rule 108-EE(1)(a), which are to include legal knowledge, administrative ability, relevant experience, integrity, confidentiality and unimpeachable conduct.
The guidelines must provide a fair, transparent and non-arbitrary process, and the State must bear the judgment's observations in mind while framing them. There was no order as to costs, and pending applications were disposed of.
The appeal was reserved on 6 October 2026 and pronounced on 2 November 2026.