PTCL resumption proceedings initiated after 47 years are barred by inordinate delay and laches.

The land in Survey No. 149/1, measuring one acre, formed part of land granted to Shaara alias Shaarappa in 1937.

It was sold under a registered deed in 1961 by Muniswamappa, a son of the grantee, to Narayanappa; subsequent transfers culminated in the petitioner’s purchase in 2007.

Resumption proceedings were initiated in 2006 by members of the grantee’s family.

After successive orders and a remand, the Deputy Commissioner, by order dated 18 July 2024, directed restoration of Survey No. 149/1.

The petitioner challenged that order.

At the hearing, he stated that he was not pressing prayer (A).

1. Whether the Deputy Commissioner’s order restoring Survey No. 149/1 could stand when resumption proceedings were initiated decades after the 1961 sale.

2. Whether the grantee’s family members’ knowledge of the 1961 transaction was relevant to delay and laches, notwithstanding their contention that it was an intra-family sale.

The Court considered the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prohibition of Transfer of Certain Lands) Act, 1978 (“PTCL Act”), under which the proceedings had been brought, and applied the principle that resumption proceedings may be unsustainable when initiated after an inordinate and unexplained delay, particularly where the claimants knew of the transaction.

The judgment does not identify a specific provision of the PTCL Act or rely on a particular precedent in its reasoning.

The Court found that the 1961 registered sale was an admitted transaction by a member of the grantee’s family.

It noted that Subbappa was the seller’s son and that Krishnappa was also a member of the grantee’s family; in the Court’s view, both were aware that the property had been dealt with by a family member.

Even accepting the claimants’ argument that the sale was intra-family, their knowledge of the transaction made the later commencement of resumption proceedings unsustainable.

The proceedings began 47 years after the sale and 26 years after the PTCL Act came into force, and the Deputy Commissioner had failed to account for that delay.

It issued a writ of certiorari, quashed the Deputy Commissioner’s order dated 18 July 2024 insofar as it related to Survey No. 149/1, and directed restoration of the petitioner’s name in the revenue records.

The writ petition was allowed.