Rectification of a sale deed cannot substitute the subject property's identity without the original transferor's participation.

The appellants (defendants 1 & 2) are sons of late Thimmadasappa, who originally owned land in Sy. No. 1/4. Through a chain of three registered sale deeds (1971–1973), this land was eventually conveyed to the plaintiff.

Separately, land in Sy. No. 162 was re-granted to Thimmadasappa in 1982 under Inam abolition laws.

In 1997, a rectification deed was executed between the plaintiff and his immediate vendor (Defendant 4), unilaterally changing the property description from Sy. No. 1/4 to Sy. No. 162; Thimmadasappa was not a party to this deed.

In 2005, Thimmadasappa partitioned Sy. No. 162 among his sons.

The Trial Court dismissed the suit, noting the plaintiff’s admission that the two survey numbers represented distinct properties.

The First Appellate Court and High Court reversed this, holding the properties were identical based on a comparison of boundaries.

The fundamental principle of civil procedure that a decision cannot be based on grounds outside the pleadings, as established in Trojan & Co. Ltd. v. Nagappa Chettiar.

Bachhaj Nahar v. Nilima Mandal, which mandates that courts cannot grant relief for claims not supported by pleadings where the defendant had no opportunity to resist.

Section 26 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963, clarifying that rectification is for correcting the expression of a common intention, not substituting the subject matter of a contract.

The doctrine of "feeding the grant by estoppel" under Section 43 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, was addressed, noting it requires identity of the property to be established first.

The maxim nemo dat quod non habet was applied to hold that a derivative title cannot exceed the original title.

The Court reasoned that the plaintiff failed to plead that Sy. No. 1/4 and Sy. No. 162 were the same property, a fatal omission since a court cannot grant unpleaded relief.

The plaintiff (PW-1) explicitly admitted during cross-examination that the two survey numbers denoted different properties, an admission the lower appellate courts ignored without cogent reasons.

The Supreme Court found the First Appellate Court’s comparison of boundaries to be "conjectural" and "perverse" as no survey or expert evidence was led to prove identity.

Legally, the 1997 rectification deed was held incompetent because it sought to substitute one distinct property for another without the participation of the original transferor, Thimmadasappa.

The High Court’s invocation of Section 43 of the ToP Act was deemed a jurisdictional error as the provision was never pleaded, and its application was premature without a factual finding on the identity of the land.

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal, setting aside the judgments of the High Court and First Appellate Court and restoring the Trial Court’s dismissal of the suit. No order as to costs was made.