Karnataka HC Quashes PTCL Resumption After Grantee’s Heirs Sold Land, Orders Buyer’s Name Restored In Revenue Records

The land was granted in 1968–69. The original grantees’ legal heirs sold it to Sreenivasa on 1 April 2005; Sreenivasa and members of the grantee’s family later sold it to Bupathi Reddy and Kavitha Reddy on 4 February 2008, who sold it to the petitioner on 24 September 2009.

Resumption proceedings were initiated before the Assistant Commissioner in 2006. The Assistant Commissioner ordered resumption, and the Deputy Commissioner upheld that order. The petitioner challenged both orders by writ petition.

The Court described the PTCL Act as protecting members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from exploitation by prohibiting alienation of granted lands without prior permission; resumption is a remedy against unauthorised transfers.

It held that a grantee or the grantee’s heirs who voluntarily execute a registered sale deed cannot later invoke the Act to nullify their own transaction, and that estoppel applies in such circumstances. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision referred to as the “Seethamma case” (no fuller citation supplied in the judgment), the Court stated that the grantee’s family could not institute the resumption proceedings in the circumstances of this case.

The Court noted that the grantee’s family had participated in the successive sales of the land and had also initiated the resumption proceedings.

Applying its stated principles on voluntary registered transfers, estoppel, and the “Seethamma case,” it concluded that the family could not use the PTCL Act to undo transactions to which it had itself been a party. The resumption orders therefore could not legally be sustained.

It directed the authority concerned to mutate or restore the petitioner’s name in the revenue records for the subject land.