Long-standing jamabandi cannot be cancelled in a summary proceeding without notice or filing a civil suit for title declaration.

The petitioner, surviving heir of late Raghunath Sah, challenged the cancellation of Jamabandi Nos. 2858 and 2859 concerning 0.77 acres of land in Katihar.

The land was originally purchased by the petitioner’s parents via registered sale deeds in 1967 from a prior settlee and remained in their continuous possession for over 50 years.

In 2017-18, the District Magistrate (Collector), acting on a complaint, initiated Misc. Case No. 14/2017-18 and cancelled the original settlements (Jamabandi Nos. 1626 and 1627) on the grounds that the original settlee was issueless and had illegally transferred government land.

Consequently, the petitioner’s subsequent Jamabandis were also cancelled without prior notice or opportunity for a hearing.

The court applied Section 9 of the Bihar Mutation Act, 2011, which designates the Additional Collector as the competent authority to cancel a Jamabandi, while the Collector acts as the Appellate authority.

Precedents of Maya Devi Ors. v. The State of Bihar (2014) and State of Bihar v. Harendra Nath Tiwary (2015) establish that longstanding Jamabandis cannot be cancelled in summary proceedings; if the State disputes a title, its sole remedy is through a civil court declaration.

The Collector usurped the original jurisdiction belonging to the Additional Collector under Section 9 of the Act.

The petitioner’s Jamabandis had been maintained since 1987 (and the underlying transaction dates to 1967), creating valuable rights that could not be extinguished without natural justice.

The Circle Officer had exceeded the scope of the original recommendation by cancelling the petitioner’s specific Jamabandis when the initial proceeding only targeted the vendor’s records.

Applying the Maya Devi doctrine, the court reasoned that the State cannot use administrative summary powers to settle title disputes involving decades of possession.

The court allowed the writ petition and quashed the entire proceedings of Misc. Case No. 14 of 2017-18, granting the State liberty to pursue the matter before an appropriate civil forum if they intended to dispute the title formally.