Revisional Power Under Karnataka Land Revenue Act Cannot Be Exercised Beyond Three-Year Limit, Supreme Court Holds

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva quashes a 2014 notice reopening land title enquiries after four decades, ruling limitation under Section 56 is absolute.

The Supreme Court has quashed a notice issued in April 2014 by the Joint Director/Registrar of Land Records, Bengaluru, purporting to reopen title enquiries into land that had been allotted City Title Survey numbers forty years earlier. In a judgment dated 2 September 2026, a Division Bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva held that the proviso to Section 56(3) of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 imposes an absolute outer limit of three years on the exercise of suo motu revisional power, and that no recourse to the Limitation Act, 1963 or to the inherent powers provision in Section 25 of the same Act can displace that mandate. The ruling restores the order of a single judge of the Karnataka High Court who had allowed the writ petitions on the ground of limitation alone.

How the Dispute Reached the Supreme Court

M.R.R. Setty claimed ownership of 28 guntas of land in Survey No. 2 of Dasarahalli Village, Bengaluru, purchased under eight sale deeds executed in 1929. In 1974, a City Title Survey was conducted and the land was allotted City Title Survey numbers 174/1 to 174/5. In 2004, Setty applied for permission to construct a residential apartment building under the name Gokul Lake View. The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike sanctioned the construction plan on 8 July 2004. Construction commenced on 22 May 2005 and an Occupancy Certificate was issued on 12/13 June 2006, permitting occupation of the completed building.

In April 2014 — eight years after the Occupancy Certificate and four decades after the survey — the Joint Director/Registrar of Land Records issued a notice under Section 56 of the Act of 1964. The notice cancelled an earlier Enquiry Officer's order and directed a fresh enquiry into the nature of the land, including Survey Nos. 174, 174/1, 174/2, 174/3, 174/5, 178, 178/1, 108, 109, 129, 130, 155, 166, 171, 172 and 1019, covering the Yediyur Lake region. The notice was triggered by a complaint from one L. Shankaralingaiah, who alleged that Yediyur Lake was being encroached upon by members of the public.

Setty and others filed writ petitions before the Karnataka High Court challenging the notice. A single judge allowed those petitions on 22 July 2015, holding that the revisional jurisdiction had been exercised well beyond the three-year period stipulated in the proviso to Section 56(3) and that the Joint Director/Registrar had no jurisdiction to initiate such proceedings after the expiry of 35 years from the date of allotment of the CTS numbers.

The Government of Karnataka and the Joint Director/Registrar filed writ appeals. A Division Bench of the High Court, by a common judgment dated 9 January 2020, reversed the single judge. It reasoned that no adverse order had yet been passed and that a fresh enquiry was justified to ascertain whether the lake had been encroached upon, directing the landowners to participate in such proceedings. The review petition filed by Setty against that judgment was dismissed on 16 June 2023. Setty then approached the Supreme Court; a stay of the 2020 judgment was granted on 17 October 2023. Setty expired on 28 December 2024 and his widow and two sons were brought on record as legal representatives.

The Core Question: Did Limitation Bar the Revisional Notice?

The Supreme Court framed the dispute narrowly: whether the exercise of jurisdiction under Section 56 of the Act of 1964, on the basis of a third-party complaint, was sustainable given the limitation prescribed in the statute.

Section 56(1) empowers a Tribunal or authorised Revenue/Survey Officer to call for and examine the records of any enquiry or proceeding of a subordinate officer to satisfy itself as to the legality or propriety of the proceedings. Section 56(2) allows such orders to be modified, annulled or reversed, with notice and a hearing. Section 56(3) bars any revision application in respect of an order against which an appeal has been preferred and requires any application to be presented within four months of the order. The proviso to Section 56(3), which the Court found decisive, reads:

“Provided that any Revenue Officer or Survey Officer referred to in sub-section (1) may exercise power under this section in respect of any order against which no appeal has been preferred under this Chapter, at any time within three years from the date of the order sought to be revised.”

The CTS numbers had been allotted in 1974. The notice was issued in 2014. On any calculation, the three-year window had closed decades earlier.

The Court's Rejection of the Government's Arguments

The Government of Karnataka raised two alternative arguments. First, it relied on Section 52 of the Act of 1964, which applies Sections 4, 5 and 12 of the Limitation Act, 1963 to appeals under the Act. The Court dismissed this with directness: Section 52 applies only to appeals, not to exercise of revisional power under Section 56. The Court added that even if Section 52 were relevant, it operates only where the Act of 1964 does not otherwise provide — and the proviso to Section 56(3) provides in categorical terms. The provisions of the Limitation Act, 1963 could not be pressed into service to negate the limitation prescribed in that proviso.

Second, the Government relied on the Karnataka Land Revenue (Amendment) Act, 2025, which amended Section 25 of the Act of 1964 — the provision preserving the inherent power of a Revenue Court to make orders necessary for the ends of justice or to prevent abuse of process. The amendment inserted the words “or to correct” after “to prevent” and added a proviso allowing the inherent power to review to be exercised suo motu or on application within six months on discovery of new matter, error apparent on the face of the record, or exercise of power without jurisdiction.

The Court rejected this argument on a threshold ground. Section 24 of the Act of 1964 designates Revenue Officers, not below the rank of Tahsildar, as a “Revenue Court” when they enquire into or decide questions arising between the State Government and any person or between parties to proceedings. The allotment of CTS numbers by a Revenue/Survey Officer in 1974 was not a determination of any such question. It was an administrative exercise, not quasi-judicial in nature. Accordingly, the amended Section 25 and its proviso had no application to the proceedings in question.

Precedent on Reasonable Time Even Without Prescribed Limitation

The Court also surveyed the position where no limitation is prescribed for exercise of suo motu revisional power. In State of Gujarat v. Patil Raghav Natha and others, a three-judge bench had held that such power must be exercised within a reasonable time, to be determined by the facts and the nature of the order being revised. This principle was affirmed in a line of decisions including Securities and Exchange Board of India v. Sunil Krishna Khaitan and others, which restated that the nature of the statute, rights and liabilities thereunder, prejudice caused, and whether third-party rights have been created are all relevant factors; that there is public interest in not spending time on stale matters; and that exercise of power even without a prescribed timeframe must occur within reasonable time to prevent misuse and abuse.

The Court noted this settled position only to sharpen its conclusion: the present case was not even a situation where no limitation had been prescribed. A clear three-year mandate existed. The land had been in private ownership since 1929, CTS numbers had been allotted since 1974, and the authorities had themselves sanctioned construction and issued an Occupancy Certificate in 2006. Third-party interests had come into existence long before the 2014 notice was issued.

Why the Division Bench's Reasoning Was Flawed

The Division Bench of the High Court had reasoned that because no adverse order had yet been passed against the writ petitioners, the single judge should not have interfered with the notice. The Supreme Court found this reasoning untenable. The notice itself — issued in exercise of revisional power without any jurisdiction to do so — was vitiated from its inception. Requiring the appellants to participate in an enquiry premised on an unlawful invocation of power could not be sustained. The single judge had been fully justified in quashing the notice; the Division Bench had erred in reversing that order.

The Court also held that the second bench of the High Court compounded the error by rejecting the review petition and refusing to correct the position.

Order

The Supreme Court allowed both civil appeals. The common judgment dated 9 January 2020 of the Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court, insofar as it pertained to Writ Appeal No. 6405 of 2017, was set aside. The order dated 16 June 2023 dismissing Review Petition No. 105 of 2022 was also set aside. The Notice dated 26 April 2014 was quashed insofar as it pertained to the land of the appellants. Parties were directed to bear their own costs.