MP HC quashes SDO order reopening Khajrana encroachment fight, directs possession to builder within 30 days
Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt at Indore held that the Sub Divisional Officer misread a High Court direction to verify documents and instead opened a fresh Section 250 proceeding for occupants who were never found on the land at demarcation, dismissed five writ petitions by those occupants as an abuse of process, and told the revenue authorities to hand over the 0.720 hectare plot to Shree Ram Builders.
A developer that has been fighting since 2017 to recover 0.720 hectare of its own land at Khajrana in Indore from encroachers, and had won before the Tehsildar, the Sub Divisional Officer, the Additional Commissioner, a Single Judge, two Division Benches and the Supreme Court, has finally been told it will get possession. Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, sitting at the Indore Bench, on 27 October 2026 quashed an order of 11 March 2024 by which the Sub Divisional Officer (Revenue) had treated a fresh set of occupants as outside the earlier eviction orders and set in motion a new round of proceedings under Section 250 of the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1959. The judge dismissed five writ petitions filed by those occupants, finding that none of them had produced a title document, that most gave addresses elsewhere in the State, and that their petitions were filed “with a clear intention to abuse the process of law”. The revenue authorities were directed to remove any remaining encroachment and hand over the plot, preferably within 30 days.
Nine years, seven forums, one plot
M/s Shree Ram Builders, through its partner Shashibhushan Khandelwal, bought Survey No. 66/2(k) at village Khajrana by registered sale deed on 31 March 2003 and had its name mutated as bhumiswami. The land was then caught up in Indore Development Authority schemes, first Scheme No. 132 and then Scheme No. 171. The acquisition was quashed in W.P. No. 14605 of 2006, a Full Bench affirmed that in W.A. No. 1455 of 2007, the Authority’s special leave petition was dismissed, and after the land was again included in Scheme No. 171 the revisional authority on 8 April 2015 directed its exclusion. The Authority later granted the firm permission to develop the land.
When the revenue authorities carried out a demarcation in January 2017, they found the plot occupied by 70 encroachers. The firm applied under Section 250 of the Land Revenue Code, the provision that lets a bhumiswami who has been dispossessed otherwise than in due course of law, or whose land is unauthorisedly occupied, ask the Tehsildar to restore possession. On 25 June 2018 the Tehsildar allowed the application in Case No. 4/A-70/2017-18 and ordered the firm reinstated after removal of the encroachments. The encroachers lost before the Sub Divisional Officer on 4 April 2019, before the Additional Commissioner on 8 August 2019, before a Single Judge in M.P. No. 5156 of 2019 on 1 October 2020, and before a Division Bench in W.A. No. 1233 of 2020 on 16 December 2020. The Single Judge in that round had recorded that of the 62 occupants who came to court only six produced registered sale deeds, that even those deeds did not disclose how the vendors had acquired title, that the rest had built houses without any building permission, and that paying property tax or obtaining an electricity connection confers no title.
The orders were not implemented. The firm filed W.P. No. 5857 of 2021 for a direction to comply; a Single Judge dismissed it, but a Division Bench allowed W.A. No. 1224 of 2023 on 25 October 2023, finding the inaction of the authorities “glaring on the face of record”, and directed the revenue officers to remove the encroachments with police assistance and restore vacant possession within 45 days. Some encroachers and third parties took that order to the Supreme Court, which dismissed their special leave petition on 18 June 2024. When nothing happened, the firm filed Contempt Petition No. 109 of 2024, in which the Collector, Indore, gave an undertaking on 12 April 2024 to comply by 30 June 2024.
How a direction to check documents became a new case
In the meantime, persons claiming that their houses stood on the plot filed W.P. No. 3337 of 2024 and W.P. No. 4854 of 2024. Those petitions were disposed of on 17 February and 1 March 2024 with a direction that the petitioners approach the SDO within seven days with all documents to demonstrate that their property was not covered by the Division Bench order, and that the SDO examine each application. A Division Bench modified the first of those orders on 20 February 2024 in W.A. No. 424 of 2024. Acting on the representations, the SDO passed the order of 11 March 2024. According to the firm, which says it learned of the order only in June 2024 when the occupants began filing writ petitions, the SDO held that the private respondents were not covered by the Division Bench order because they had not been parties to it, without any discussion of the identity or location of their properties and without hearing the recorded owner, and directed proceedings under Section 250.
A public notice followed on 16 May 2024 from the Tehsildar, Juni Indore, and five groups of occupants, led by Arjun Yadav, Dulari Mohaniya, Brajesh Kannoji, Rajendra Rathore and Gajanand Pawar, filed W.P. Nos. 16249, 16676, 16752, 17231 and 17241 of 2024, seeking to quash the notice or the eviction order and to restrain any demolition. When one of them obtained an interim order on 24 June 2024, the firm appealed in W.A. No. 1487 of 2024. The Division Bench set the interim order aside, recording that ten of the sixteen claimants relied on agreements to sell, which under Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act confer no title; that three relied on sale deeds, two of them executed as recently as 3 January and 23 March 2024 and the third on 12 April 2018, none mentioning a survey number and all executed by third parties rather than the recorded owner; that three had filed no document at all; and that none had a building permission or sanctioned map. The notice of 16 May 2024, the bench observed, was a general one not addressed to any of them, and the petition appeared to have been filed with an oblique purpose at the instance of encroachers who had already suffered the order of ejectment.
The arguments
Ravindra Singh Chhabra, Senior Advocate, with Rohit Sinnarkar for the firm, argued that the SDO’s order was executive overreach over a judicial verdict, passed without application of mind and without hearing the recorded bhumiswami, and that its only effect was to frustrate the Division Bench direction of 25 October 2023. The High Court had asked the SDO to ascertain the location and identity of the properties, not the identity of the parties, yet the SDO had found the claimants outside the order simply because they were not parties to it. If the writ petition succeeded, counsel said, nothing would survive in the contempt petition.
Veer Kumar Jain, Senior Advocate, with Padmnabh Saxena for the occupants, argued that his clients had been labelled encroachers without any proceeding against them. The earlier orders concerned only the 70 persons found at the 2017 demarcation; unless fresh proceedings under Section 250 were initiated against the present petitioners, they could not be evicted under the guise of the order in W.A. No. 1224 of 2023. They claimed settled possession and said they were being removed without due process. The firm replied that the demarcation had found 70 persons and the orders spoke of the land in question, not of named persons; and that the cause titles of the five petitions gave addresses in other towns and cities of Madhya Pradesh, not Survey No. 66/2(k).
For the State, Sudeep Bhargava, Deputy Advocate General, said there was no deliberate disobedience. The authorities could not act because the High Court had granted interim protection in the five petitions; the Collector’s assurance had been given in view of pending proceedings, and if the stay were vacated the authorities would act in accordance with law.
Locus under a cloud, and a direction misused
Justice Bhatt framed three questions: whether the authorities had failed to implement the Division Bench order in letter and spirit; whether the petitioners in the five writ petitions, who had come to court only later, had any locus or any real possession; and whether the SDO’s decision to open Section 250 proceedings on their representations amounted to overreaching a judicial order. He set out Section 250 in full, noting that it had been amended in July 2018, after the Tehsildar’s order, and reproduced the earlier Single Judge’s findings on title, limitation and the effect of unauthorised construction.
On locus, the court found it under a cloud. The Revenue Inspector had recorded 70 encroachers at the demarcation; 62 of them had litigated through to the Division Bench and the Supreme Court and lost; the present petitioners were not among those found on the land, were not parties to any earlier round, and had not shown long, uninterrupted possession hostile to the owner. The SDO, instead of deciding their entitlement by verifying documents as the court had directed, had initiated Section 250 proceedings and opened a new round of litigation for persons who were not on record at the demarcation, misusing the direction. Most of the petitioners gave addresses outside the land, something the court said spoke volumes. It was, the judge said, a travesty of justice that a party that had contested the matter from the SDO to the Supreme Court could not reap the fruits of a specific Division Bench direction because of petitions by so-called occupants who, even in these proceedings, had produced no document of title or valid occupation. The Collector had given an assurance to implement the order, and frivolous litigation filed to frustrate the legitimate right of a titled owner was, in the court’s words, certainly hit by Articles 19 and 300-A of the Constitution.
Since the petitioners had produced no documents of title, the court held, there was no question of initiating any proceeding under Section 250 in their favour, and the SDO’s order, passed by misinterpreting the direction to entertain representations, was illegal, arbitrary and contrary to the directions in the earlier round. Granting relief to litigants who projected themselves as encroachers would amount to “giving premium to the dishonest intention”; the jurisdiction under Article 226 exists to do justice, not to help parties take undue advantage of the process of law. The original owner, the court added, had never been found to be an encroacher and had no occasion to file any Section 250 proceeding of its own at the relevant time.
Order
W.P. No. 18150 of 2024 was allowed and the SDO’s orders dated 11 March 2024 were set aside, with the reliefs sought in the petition granted. W.P. Nos. 16249, 16676, 16752, 17231 and 17241 of 2024 were dismissed, the court holding that the petitioners had produced no valid documents of title and that their addresses showed they did not reside on the land. Contempt Petition No. 109 of 2024 was disposed of without further orders on the footing that the authorities will now implement the earlier order by removing any encroachment found on the land, preferably within 30 days of receipt of a certified copy, and hand over possession of Survey No. 66/2(k) at village Khajrana to the firm. Contempt Petitions No. 2907 of 2024 (Premlata Agrawal) and No. 3112 of 2024 (Shyam Silawat), both against Ashish Singh and others, were dismissed as nothing survived in them. A copy of the order is to be kept in each connected file.