Deficit stamp duty cannot be a ground to reject revised Non-Agricultural permission under Section 65 of the Code.

The petitioner, Sonal Raju Shah, is the owner and occupant of land bearing Survey No. 45 in Village Kalali, Vadodara, having purchased it via registered sale deeds in 2011 and 2014

Original Non-Agricultural (NA) permission was granted in 2012

The petitioner applied for revised “multipurpose” NA permission under Section 65A of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code (GLRC) on 04.10.2023

The District Collector, Vadodara, rejected (or "filed") the application on 20.11.2023, citing a negative opinion from the Deputy Collector, Stamp Duty, regarding alleged deficit stamp duty on a family partition entry (Mutation Entry No. 3019)

The petitioner challenged this order as being beyond the jurisdiction of the Revenue Authority

1. Whether the District Collector has the jurisdiction to reject an application for revised NA permission under Section 65A of the GLRC based on alleged deficits in stamp duty or disputes regarding revenue entries

2. Whether the Collector's inquiry under Section 65/65A of the GLRC can extend to examining the title or fiscal liabilities governed by other statutes like the Stamp Act

The court applied Section 65 and 65A of the Gujarat Land Revenue Code, 1879, which govern the conversion of land use for occupants

It relied on the precedent Laxmi Associates v. Collector, Vadodara [2006 (3) GLR 1982], which established that revenue authorities cannot cancel entries or reject permissions based on assumptions of violations of other enactments

Furthermore, the court followed the "settled legal position" from Tusharbhai Harjibhai Ghelani v. State of Gujarat [2019 (4) GLR 2578], which mandates that an inquiry under Section 65 is restricted to the applicant's status as an physical occupant and cannot involve a detailed inquiry into title or extraneous fiscal matters

The court reasoned that the District Collector’s role under Section 65 and 65A is strictly limited to verifying whether the applicant is the "occupant" of the land as per revenue records

The court noted that the petitioner held a valid NA permission since 2012 and that any proceedings for deficit stamp duty are separate legal processes that do not empower the Collector to stall land-use conversion

The Collector erred by conflating fiscal stamp duty issues with land-use rights, and further erred by misidentifying survey numbers involved in the partition dispute

Following the Division Bench's reasoning in LPA No. 1181/2025, the court held that "digging graves" by investigating decades-old entries or collateral fiscal liabilities to deny NA permission is an "utter ignorance" of the law

It held that the denial of NA permission under the garb of a defective title or deficit stamp duty amounts to a transgression of jurisdiction

The court directed the Respondent No. 2 (District Collector) to allow the petitioner to apply afresh and decide the matter within the statutory period, strictly following the principles laid down in Tushar Ghelani, excluding stamp duty considerations from the NA process

Rule made absolute