- Supreme Court upheld a 1957 sale deed resolving a 70-year land dispute in Haridwar
- The dispute involved possession of 15.5 bighas bought by appellant Sarafat Ali's predecessors as minors
- Lower courts invalidated the deed citing UP Zamindari Abolition Act and witness discrepancies
The Supreme Court recently decided a seventy-year-old land dispute by upholding a sale deed signed in 1957. Four generations of a family got embroiled in the litigation for over seven decades.
A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and NV Anjaria finally decided a seven-decade-old dispute over 15.5 bighas in Narsipur Kalan village in Uttarakhand's Haridwar, bought by predecessors of appellant Sarafat Ali through the sale deed of June 4, 1957.
By upholding the seventy-year-old sale deed, the top court has finally put an end to a long-running legal battle which is even older than the judges who decided it.
What Was Dispute?
The dispute arose from a 1957 registered sale deed through which the appellants' predecessors, then minors, purchased over 15 bighas of land in Haridwar district and claimed to have remained in possession ever since.
They secured mutation of the land in their favour in 1984 after one of the sellers withdrew his objection. During consolidation proceedings in 1991, they sought recognition of their rights as Bhumidhar. Although the Consolidation Officer initially allowed their claim and a subsequent compromise in 1993 also supported their possession, the matter was reopened after objections by other co-tenure holders.
Following a full hearing, the Consolidation Officer rejected the appellants' claim in 1999, holding that the sale deed had not been properly proved and was void under Section 154 of the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act. The appellate and revisional authorities upheld the decision, and the High Court dismissed the appellants' writ petition in 2017, affirming the findings.
What Supreme Court Said?
The concurrent findings of courts below rested on two pillars. First, that the sale deed contravened Section 154 of the Abolition Act, rendering it void. Second, that the execution of the deed was not proved because the attesting witness Baru described his residence as "Nasirpur Kalan" in his 1995 statement, whereas the certified copy of the deed described him as a resident of "Nihandpur Suthari."
The top court held that the High Court and the Consolidation Authorities committed a manifest error in treating the sale deed dated June 4, 1957, as void and in disregarding it on the basis of immaterial discrepancies relating to the attesting witness.
The court noted that it is not even the pleaded case of the respondents that the sale deed was forged, executed under coercion, impersonation or fraudulent misrepresentation.
"The challenge was not founded upon any allegation that the executants were deceived as to the character of the document, nor that the transaction suffered from fraud of such nature as would render the instrument void ab initio. At the highest, the objections raised pertained only to peripheral discrepancies in proof. Such circumstances, by no stretch, could justify disregarding a registered conveyance carrying a presumption of validity in law," the court held.
The court further noted that appellants have consistently asserted possession pursuant to the sale deed, and significantly, such assertion has not been effectively controverted by the respondents.
"The cumulative effect of the registered sale deed, the presumption attaching thereto, the absence of any substantive challenge alleging forgery or fraud, and the failure of the respondents to elicit any material contradiction in the testimony of the attesting witness, clearly render the findings recorded by the Consolidation Authorities and affirmed by the High Court unsustainable in law," the court observed.
The top court, while setting aside concurrent findings of the trial court and high court, observed: "What initially commenced as proceedings for mutation gradually traversed into the realm of the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950, and the consolidation framework, though its odyssey across multiple forums only culminated in futility, with the authorities below concurrently holding that the appellants had failed to prove the execution of the said sale deed, thereby compelling them to seek refuge before this court."
