High Court turns down AP plea to lay claim on property

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad,May 21: A division Bench comprising Justices A. Gopal Reddy and P. Durga Prasad of the AP High Court has turned down the state government’s plea by ruling that the Co-operative Tenant Farming Society, Malkapur Limited was the absolute owner of 432 acres situated in Malapur village in Choutuppal mandal of Nalgonda district.

According to the society, the members of the society were occupants of 432 acres land as they had become pattedars after the abolition of jagirs in 1949. The revenue authorities, however, had been claiming that it was an evacuee property and they had issued proceedings under Section 19 of the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1954. Aggrieved by the action of the revenue authorities, the society had approached the High Court in 1998 and a single judge had granted an order in favour of the society in 2000 by quashing the proceedings of the joint collector-cum-deputy custodian of the evacuee property. The joint collector had then filed an appeal against the order. The revenue authorities claimed that the land was an evacuee property as its original owner, Jagirdar Mirza Maqsood Ahmed Khan, had migrated to Pakistan.

However, the members of their predecessors-in-title had acquired titles to the property on abolition of jagirs. They contended that Mirza Maqsood Khan was not a jagirdar but a contractor in the erstwhile Nizam’s state and had left the country during partition. The authorities further contended that the society claimed that its members were the tenants of the original jagirdar even before the land in question being declared an evacuee property.

The revenue authorities argued that the members of the society had accepted it through their petition, dated July 14, 1960, that Mirza Maqsood Ahmed Khan was a pattedar and not a jagirdar and in the absence of any records to show that he was a jagirdar, they could not claim any tenancy rights. The authorities pointed out that none of the names of the members of the society were recorded as protected tenants or ordinary tenants in the records prepared under the Tenancy Act. The society, on the other hand, contended that they had bought the land through open auction conducted by the government by paying Rs 17,312 and produced the receipts of challans.

They said that the land was originally transferred to Tahelmal and Radha Bai on January 1, 1950 by the Regional Settlement Commissioner. After hearing the elaborate arguments of both sides, the Bench observed that “Once the property has ceased to be evacuee property it cannot be dealt with under the Central Act No. XXXI of 1950. The property, once it became part of the compensation pool after notification, would be dealt with under the provisions of the Act and any variation of any lease or allotment thereafter could only be made under Section 19 of the Act.”