A Tahsildar validated three unregistered sales in one stroke. Telangana High Court sets it aside for displacing a registered deed without notice
Justice Vakiti Ramakrishna Reddy holds that Section 5-A of the ROR Act gave no power to resolve a disputed foundational alienation, and that a registered instrument cannot be rendered ineffective in a summary enquiry.
Four acres of agricultural land at Mallapur village had two claimants. One held a registered sale deed of August 2007 from the recorded pattadar. The other held nothing registered at all — only a chain of three unregistered sada documents stretching back to 1981 — and in April 2008 she persuaded the Tahsildar to validate the whole chain in a single proceeding under Section 5-A of the Record of Rights Act. The holder of the registered deed was never given notice. After eighteen years of revenue appeals and revisions, the Telangana High Court has set the entire chain of orders aside.
Two titles over the same four acres
The petitioner's case was that she bought the land — four acres in Survey No. 418/AA at Mallapur village, Yadagirigutta Mandal, then in Nalgonda and now in Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district — under a registered sale deed of 23 August 2007 executed by the recorded pattadar and another, and that she has been in physical possession since.
The fifth respondent traced her claim through three successive unregistered transactions, none of them a registered document: a sada sale deed of December 1981 said to have been executed by the original pattadar in favour of one purchaser; a second sada sale deed of December 1986 by that purchaser in favour of others; and a further sale of February 2000 by one of them in her favour. On the strength of the last document, she moved a single application before the Tahsildar under Section 5-A of the Andhra Pradesh Rights in Land and Pattadar Pass Books Act, 1971, seeking regularisation of the entire chain.
By a proceeding of 27 April 2008 — after the petitioner's registered deed over the very same land had already been executed and registered — the Tahsildar validated all three sada transactions in one stroke and issued a Form 13-B certificate in the fifth respondent's favour, without notice to the petitioner.
What followed is a long revenue history. In June 2010 the Revenue Divisional Officer set that order aside and remanded the matter for a de novo enquiry, recording no fewer than six distinct procedural irregularities attending the grant of the certificate — among them the failure to serve notice on the original pattadar and on the first sada purchaser. On remand the enquiry was renumbered, statements were recorded and a local inspection and panchanama were held in September 2010, and in December 2010 the Tahsildar again decided in the fifth respondent's favour. The Revenue Divisional Officer dismissed the petitioner's appeal in December 2015; the Special Tribunal, to which revisional powers were transferred on the formation of Telangana, dismissed her revision in July 2021. This writ petition followed.
The competing arguments about what a Tahsildar may decide
For the petitioner it was argued that a registered sale deed carries a presumption of validity and genuineness, that registration is not a mere procedural formality, and that the impugned orders had the effect of nullifying her registered deed — prior in time to the validation — without that document ever having been put in issue or its holder heard. Such a dispute, she said, could be adjudicated only by a competent civil court on proper pleadings and evidence.
She also attacked the use made of the panchanama and the pahanis to record a finding of possession in her rival's favour. The enquiry contemplated by Section 5-A and Rule 22 is confined to ascertaining whether the document presented is capable of being regularised within the four corners of that provision; it does not extend to adjudicating disputed possession or title between rival claimants, still less where one of them holds a registered deed.
And she pointed to the person missing from the whole proceeding: even after remand, the enquiry concluded without ever securing the presence or recording the version of the woman whose alleged alienation in 1981 lies at the root of the fifth respondent's title.
For the fifth respondent it was argued that the Tahsildar is invested with the powers of a civil court under Section 10(1) of the Act, and that recording depositions, conducting a local inspection and panchanama and weighing documentary and oral evidence, including the depositions of independent villagers, was a lawful exercise of that power. The 1986 and 2000 documents had never been disputed by the vendors under them; she had been in continuous, peaceful possession for over two decades; and the concurrent findings of the Tahsildar, the Revenue Divisional Officer and the Special Tribunal, being findings of fact, did not warrant interference under Article 226.
Why the chain could not be validated in one stroke
The Court's answer begins with the structure of the chain rather than with possession.
Rule 22 and Section 5-A, it held, required the foundational transaction to be dealt with first. Everything in the fifth respondent's title depends on the 1981 alienation by the original pattadar; if that transaction was itself unestablished and disputed, the later documents could not supply what was missing at the root. The maxim nemo dat quod non habet was invoked to explain the consequence: a person cannot ordinarily convey a better title than he himself possesses, so if the first purchaser's title depended on a disputed alienation, his transferee could not acquire an independent or better title merely through the later sadabainama. The revenue authorities could not validate the subsequent chain without first resolving the foundational dispute in the manner known to law.
Two further considerations reinforced the conclusion. The first is the sequence: the certificate issued in April 2008, after the petitioner's registered deed of August 2007 had already come into existence over the same land, and without any notice to her — although Rule 22(3) requires notice not merely to the alienor of the document sought to be regularised but to all other persons believed to be interested in the land.
The second is what a registered instrument is. The judgment quotes the Supreme Court in Hemalatha v. Tukaram: a registered sale deed carries a formidable presumption of validity and genuineness, registration is a solemn act that imparts a high degree of sanctity to the document, and a court must not lightly or casually declare a registered instrument a sham. A Division Bench of the same High Court in A.R. Hemavathy v. A.D. Venkatesh had held similarly that a registered sale deed is not a mere piece of evidence but a formal declaration of title recognised by law, the presumption attaching to it being a cornerstone of property law that ensures certainty and stability in transactions.
From that the Court drew an argument from the greater to the lesser. If a civil court with plenary jurisdiction, seized of a specific plea, may not lightly treat a registered sale deed as a sham or a nullity, it follows all the more strongly that a Tahsildar exercising the summary and limited jurisdiction conferred by Section 5-A — without the registered deed even being in issue before him, and without notice to its holder — could have no power to render that document of no effect. Yet that, in substance, is what the proceedings did.
Order
The Court's conclusion was that the respondent authorities, having themselves found the foundational 1981 transaction to be disputed, exceeded their jurisdiction under Section 5-A and Rule 22 by validating in one stroke, and without notice to the petitioner, a chain of three successive sada transactions traced through that document, over land already covered by her subsisting registered sale deed. Section 10(1) did not clothe the Tahsildar with the power to adjudicate that disputed question, nor to displace, in a summary enquiry, the presumption of validity attaching to a registered instrument.
The writ petition was allowed. The Special Tribunal's order of July 2021 was set aside, and with it the Revenue Divisional Officer's order of December 2015, the Tahsildar's proceedings of December 2010 and the underlying validation proceeding of April 2008 under Section 5-A.
Liberty was granted to the parties to approach the competent civil court for adjudication of their respective rights, title and possession, including as regards the effect of two subsequent transfers of 2016 and 2020 referred to in the judgment. That court is to decide independently and in accordance with law, uninfluenced by any observation in the order. The Court made clear that it had expressed no opinion on the rival claims or on title, and left all contentions open. There was no order as to costs, and the registry was directed to mark a law-report copy.
The practical reach of the judgment lies in the distinction it draws between two things that revenue officers routinely run together. Section 5-A exists to regularise an unregistered alienation; it is a mechanism for putting an admitted transaction on the record. It is not a forum for deciding which of two competing claimants owns the land, and the moment the authority itself finds the foundational transaction disputed, the enquiry has reached the edge of its own jurisdiction. Here the Revenue Divisional Officer had identified six procedural defects at the first attempt, and the second attempt still ended without hearing the woman whose signature in 1981 the whole chain depends on.
For holders of registered deeds the useful line is the a fortiori one. A civil court needs a specific plea and strong material before it will treat a registered instrument as a sham; a Tahsildar conducting a summary regularisation enquiry, to which the deed holder was not even a party, cannot achieve the same result by validating somebody else's paperwork over the same land.