The appellant had died five months before the order was passed in his favour. The Telangana High Court holds the Special Tribunal's order a nullity
Justice Vakiti Ramakrishna Reddy also holds the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to cancel mutations after sending the title dispute to the civil court, and restores the petitioners' pass books.
An order of a Special Tribunal cancelling mutations and pattadar pass books over an acre of agricultural land in Mahabubabad district has been set aside by the Telangana High Court on two independent grounds. The appeal had been filed by a man who died in January 2021, and both the first order in it and the final order of 25 June 2021 were passed after his death, with his legal representatives never brought on record. And having relegated the parties to the civil court on the question of title, the Tribunal had no business cancelling the revenue entries. Justice Vakiti Ramakrishna Reddy held the order could not be sustained on either count.
One acre, and two families' claims
The dispute concerns agricultural land measuring three acres in a survey number at Chinnagudur village and mandal, Mahabubabad district, of which one acre in a sub-division is the immediate subject of the rival claim.
The petitioners' case is that the land originally belonged to a man who died, after which it was mutated in the name of the first petitioner, his widow, by way of succession. She then executed registered gift deeds in favour of her sons, including the second and third petitioners, pursuant to which their names too were mutated in the revenue records and digital pattadar pass books were issued to them. They assert that they have at all material times been, and continue to be, in possession and enjoyment of the land.
The sixth respondent, and after his death his legal representatives arrayed as respondents 7 to 9, set up a competing account of the succession, asserting a different date of death for the original holder and a different set of legal heirs.
That rival claim had travelled through the revenue hierarchy as an appeal under the record of rights legislation, and was transferred to the Special Tribunal and renumbered as a Tribunal Case in 2021. There is also a civil suit pending between the parties on the file of a Junior Civil Judge, in which the question of title falls to be decided.
The statutes, and a change of law mid-stream
The appeal was governed by the Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act, 2020, which came into force in October 2020 and under which, by Section 16(1), pending appeals and revisions were dealt with.
During the pendency of the writ petition the law changed again. The 2020 Act was repealed by the Telangana Bhu Bharati (Record of Rights in Land) Act, 2025, which received the Governor's assent on 3 January 2025 and was published in the Gazette the following day, with the rules framed under it brought into force from 14 April 2025.
The Court held that the repeal made no difference to its conclusion — and that if anything, the new Act placed the position beyond doubt. Section 8 of the 2025 Act supplies the machinery for determining, after notice to persons interested or affected, whether and in what manner the record of rights is to be amended, and for carrying out the amendment. It has to be read with Section 18, which in terms directs that the entry in the record of rights shall be amended in accordance with a declaration obtained from the civil court.
From that pairing the judgment draws the principle that decides the jurisdictional point. Whichever party succeeds in the pending civil suit may apply under Section 8, and the revenue authorities are obliged to give effect to the decree. The continued presence of that machinery, under the repealed Act and under the Act which has replaced it alike, is a further indication that the record of rights is designed to follow the adjudication of title and not to pre-empt it.
What a record of rights is for
The jurisdictional point turns on what the revenue record does, and the judgment is explicit about it.
A pattadar pass book and the entries in the record of rights are not title deeds in the sense of creating or extinguishing ownership. They record, for fiscal and administrative purposes, who is treated as the holder. When ownership is genuinely disputed between rival claimants — as it is here, with competing accounts of when the original holder died and who his heirs were — the question is one of title, and title is for the civil court.
That is why the statutory machinery runs in the direction it does. Section 18 of the 2025 Act directs that the entry be amended in accordance with a declaration obtained from the civil court, and Section 8 supplies the procedure by which the successful party applies and the revenue authorities give effect to the decree. The record follows the adjudication; it does not substitute for it. The same machinery existed under the repealed 2020 Act, which is why the change of statute mid-proceeding did not affect the analysis.
A tribunal that had sent the question elsewhere
The first ground on which the order fell is that the Tribunal did two inconsistent things in the same order.
Having relegated the parties to the civil court upon the question of title — which is where, on the statutory scheme, that question belongs — the Tribunal nonetheless proceeded to cancel the mutations and the pattadar pass books standing in the petitioners' names. The Court held it had no jurisdiction to do so. Cancelling the entries is, in substance, deciding the consequence of the title dispute in advance of the forum that is to decide the dispute.
An order for a party who no longer existed
The second ground is shorter and starker, and the facts on it were not in dispute.
The sixth respondent died on 29 January 2021. The appeal transferred to the Special Tribunal had been preferred by him during his lifetime. The first order in that appeal was passed on 20 February 2021 and the impugned order on 25 June 2021 — both after his death. His legal representatives took no steps to come on record in his place. The impugned order is therefore, as the judgment puts it, an order made in favour of a person who had, on the date it was made, ceased to exist in the eye of law.
The Court set out the consequence in principle. A dead person has no legal persona. On the death of a party a proceeding can be continued only by or against those upon whom the right to sue devolves, and only after they are brought on record. An adjudication rendered without such substitution is not a mere irregularity capable of being waived; it is a nullity, because the authority is then exercising jurisdiction over a party that does not exist.
For the foundational statement of the rule the judgment goes to Kiran Singh v. Chaman Paswan, where the Supreme Court held that a decree passed by a court without jurisdiction is a nullity, that its invalidity can be set up whenever and wherever it is sought to be enforced or relied upon — even at the stage of execution and even in collateral proceedings — and that a defect of jurisdiction, whether pecuniary or territorial or in respect of the subject matter, strikes at the very authority of the court to pass any decree and cannot be cured even by the consent of the parties. The Court then noted the application of that principle to a dead party in Gurnam Singh v. Gurbachan Kaur, where a second appeal had been decided both in favour of and against persons who had died during its pendency without their legal representatives being brought on record.
Order
The writ petition was allowed. The order passed by the Special Tribunal on 25 June 2021 was set aside.
The Court was careful to limit what it had decided. The order, it said, shall not be construed as an expression of opinion on the title or possession of either party in respect of the subject property. The revenue entries and the Pattadar Pass Books-cum-Title Deeds standing in the petitioners' names shall abide by the result of the civil suit pending on the file of the Junior Civil Judge at Thorrur.
There was no order as to costs, and the pending miscellaneous applications were disposed of as a sequel.
The practical effect is that the petitioners' names return to the record of rights for the time being, not because their title has been upheld but because the forum that cancelled those entries was not the forum entitled to decide the question — and because the person in whose favour it acted was no longer alive to receive the relief.
The two grounds are of different kinds, and that matters for anyone in a similar position. The jurisdictional finding is about what a revenue tribunal may do: having referred title to the civil court it cannot decide the consequence of title itself. The finding on death is about whether there was a proceeding at all — and because an order made for a party who has ceased to exist is a nullity rather than an irregularity, it cannot be saved by the conduct of anyone, including the legal representatives who failed to apply for substitution. On the Kiran Singh principle such an order can be disregarded whenever it is relied upon, which means its invalidity would have been available to the petitioners even in some later proceeding where it was produced against them.