Three revenue orders refusing to mutate a 2010 sale deed are set aside, and so is a fourth passed behind the buyers' backs

Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt held the Tehsildar, Sub Divisional Officer and Additional Commissioner were wrong that permission was needed, and quashed an ex parte consequential order too.

The buyers purchased land at village Sanawadiya, in Indore Tehsil and District, by a sale deed of 3 August 2010. Getting their names into the revenue records took them through a Tehsildar, a Sub Divisional Officer and an Additional Commissioner, each of whom declined, and then to the High Court under Article 227. On 9 October 2026 the Court set all three orders aside, and a fourth passed during the case without the buyers being heard.

What the petition asked for

The petitioners sought the quashing of three orders: that of the Additional Commissioner (Revenue), Indore of 25 October 2018; that of the Sub Divisional Officer, Sanyogitaganj, Indore of 29 September 2017; and that of the Tehsildar of 3 November 2016. They also asked for a direction that their application under Sections 109 and 110 of the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1959 be allowed, and that the revenue authorities mutate their names in the records in respect of the survey numbers covered by the sale deed.

The point of law the authorities got wrong

The dispute came down to whether the transfer needed permission at all. The Court held that, on the position obtaining before the amendment, Section 158(3) of the Land Revenue Code treats the person holding the land as the bhoomiswami of that land, and no permission is required for a transfer.

Measured against that, the Court found the orders of the Sub Divisional Officer and the Additional Commissioner to be apparently perverse, illegal, improper and not in consonance with the settled position of law. The order at the first level was held to be arbitrary and erroneous, causing great injustice to the petitioners' rights, with findings that were neither in consonance with the material available on record nor consistent with the provision of law. All of them were set aside.

An order passed while the case was pending

There was a further complication. While the petition was pending, the Additional Collector passed a further ex parte order, dated 18 October 2021, without impleading the petitioners as parties. That order had not been brought on record by amending the petition.

The Court held that the absence of a formal challenge did not save it. An order passed during the pendency of the proceedings, which is consequential upon the orders under challenge and is made without impleading the petitioner, is not tenable in the eyes of law. The order of 18 October 2021 was accordingly set aside as well.

The objection that came too late

The respondents raised a question about whether the petition under Article 227 was maintainable at all. The Court declined to go into it, for a reason of record rather than of principle: the petition had already been admitted by a co-ordinate Bench by an order of 1 February 2024 and listed for final hearing. Having been entertained at that stage, it was not to be turned away on maintainability at the end.

Order

The petition was allowed and the prayers in it granted. The orders of the Tehsildar, the Sub Divisional Officer and the Additional Commissioner were set aside, and the consequential ex parte order of 18 October 2021 was set aside with them. The petition was disposed of in those terms.