Supreme court judgment on land tax
dskiran
(Querist) 27 June 2015
This query is : Resolved
sir, I come to know that supreme court ordered that paying tax for ancestral agricultural land is not right to become owner of that land. (Example between 2 brothers if first brother managed to get pattadhar pass book and paid tax on his name, shall second one has to leave the property. kindly mail me about that law.
R.K Nanda
(Expert) 27 June 2015
search google.
P. Venu
(Expert) 28 June 2015
This is not Law. It is the basic principle of jurisprudence.
Revenue records, prima facie, pinpoint of title. However, it is a settled principle that revenue records are by themselves not conclusive evidence of the facts which they purport to record. A catena of the judgments of the Privy Council, the Apex Court and various High Courts has emphasized this rule. A Division Bench of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh had held in Ramanna v. Samba Moorthy, AIR 1962 AP 361as under:
"9.....In our view, the entries in the revenue records, though they may be relevant evidence under Section 35 of the Evidence Act, are not evidence of title. In Nirman Singh v. Rudra Patrab Narain Singh, 53, Ind App. 220 at p.227:98 Ind Cas 1013 at p.1017 = AIR 1926 PC 100 at p.103, it was observed at Page 227 (of Ind App): (at p. 103 of AIR) by the Judicial Committee as follows:
"The perusal by their Lordships of the judgment of the Court of the Judicial Commissioner of Oudh leads their Lordships to think that it is to a great degree based on the mischievous but persistent error that the proceedings for the mutation of names are judicial proceedings in which the title to the proprietary rights in immovable property are determined. They are nothing of the kind, as has been pointed out times innumerable by the Judicial Committee. They are much more in the nature of fiscal inquiries instituted in the interest of the State for the purpose of ascertaining which of the several claimants for the occupation of certain denominations of immovable property may be put into occupation of it with the greater confidence that the Revenue for it will be paid."
10. In our view, therefore, though the entries in the Diglot register may be evidence, they are by themselves not conclusive evidence of the facts which they purport to record. It may turn out that they are in accord with the general bulk of the evidence in the case and they may supply gaps in it. When viewed in the light of other compelling circumstances from which inference contrary to such entries can be drawn, they may become unimportant and their value insignificant."
The Apex Court has sustained this principle in Sawrni vs. Inder Kaur 1996 SCALE(6) 333
"Mutation of a property in the revenue record does not create or extinguish title nor has it nay presumptive value on title. It only enables the person in whose favour mutation is ordered to pay the land revenue in question. The learned Additional District Judge was wholly in error in coming to a conclusion that mutation in favour of Inder Kaur conveys title in her favour. This erroneous conclusion has vitiated the entire judgment."
