PANAJI
The Supreme Court of India has upheld the legal dogma that land whose ownership is transferred under the Agriculture Tenancy law cannot be put to use for any other non-agriculture purpose.
The judgement passed on Monday said tenanted lands given for agricultural use cannot be used for construction or other purposes and can only be used for agriculture.
A division bench comprising justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Arvind Kumar passed the judgement in a special leave petition filed by the Thivim Comunidade which had sought to challenge a Bombay High Court judgement in which it dismissed their plea to permit them resolve a tenancy matter with an out of court deal.
The matter pertains to two parcels of land in survey numbers 448/0 and 440/0 which were leased back in 1978 to the ancestors of Biku Vaigankar and others, who expired in 1985.
A year later, Vaigankar and the other parties filed for entering their names in property records as tenants which the Civil Court granted in ex-parte proceedings on January 8, 1986.
Aggrieved, the Thivim Comunidade challenged the declaration before the District Court but during the pendency of the challenge, the Comunidade discussed and approved 'consent terms' to resolve the dispute with the Vaigankars at an extraordinary general body meeting held on March 14, 2021.
Under these 'consent terms' approved by the general body, the Vaigankars were to get 60 per cent share and the balance 40 per cent would go to the Comunidade.
However, the permission to settle the matter out of court had to be endorsed by the Administrative Tribunal as per the Code of Comunidades and accordingly the North Goa Administrator of Comunidades forwarded the request.
However, the Administrative Tribunal rejected the application and the Thivim Comunidade knocked the doors of the Bombay High Court at Goa which also rejected the plea and dismissed the writ petition, forcing it to approach the Supreme Court with no success.
In their Monday's judgement, Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Arvind Kumar said "the proposed consent terms or the compromise sought to be entered by the appellant (Thivim Comunidade) with the private respondents (Vaigankars and others) falls foul of both the statutes ie the Tenancy Act and the Land Use Act, insofar as it creates free-hold ownership rights over tenanted land, without resorting to the procedure contemplated for the purchase of such land by the tenant and secondly, for the reason that these terms effectively allow to use agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes."
The judgement also called the 'compromise' sought by the parties as "nothing but an abuse of the process of law" and a ploy to "defeat the provisions of the law."
Meanwhile, reacting to the judgement, Advocate General Devidas Pangam said the Bombay High Court at Goa has passed multiple judgements related to tenanted land often decreeing that tenanted agriculture land cannot be used for other purposes.
