Revenue authorities lack jurisdiction to mutate land converted for non-agricultural use.

The petitioner challenged mutation entries in M.R. Nos. H:53/2022-23 and H:42/2021-22 and consequential RTC extracts relating to land it claimed to have purchased under a registered sale deed dated 17 April 2006.

The sale deed recorded that the land had been converted to non-agricultural use by an order dated 30 April 1999.

The petitioner argued, among other things, that the revenue authorities lacked jurisdiction to alter the entries and had acted without giving it a hearing.

Respondent No. 12 submitted that a civil suit instituted by the petitioner challenging registered sale deeds and related mutation entries was pending.

1. Whether the Tahsildar had jurisdiction to make the impugned mutation entries in respect of land converted to non-agricultural use.

2. Whether the pending civil proceedings precluded the petitioner from obtaining relief under Article 226 of the Constitution.

The Court relied on the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964, and the Division Bench ruling in J.M. Narayana and others v. Corporation of the City of Bangalore by its Commissioner, Office, Bangalore and others, ILR 2005 KAR 60.

That decision held that the Act does not apply to land converted to non-agricultural use by the competent authority and falling within a municipal corporation’s jurisdiction, because such land ceases to be agricultural land for the purposes of the Act.

The Court found that the petitioner’s sale deed recorded a competent authority’s non-agricultural conversion order, which had not been challenged.

Applying J.M. Narayana, it concluded that the revenue authority lacked jurisdiction to make the impugned mutation entries in respect of the converted land.

Although respondent No. 12 relied on pending civil proceedings, the Court’s stated basis for granting relief was the revenue authority’s lack of jurisdiction.

The High Court allowed the writ petition.

It set aside the mutation entries in M.R. Nos. H:53/2022-23 and H:42/2021-22, together with all consequential proceedings.