The Supreme Court docket Monday upheld an order of the Bombay Excessive Court docket at Goa, which refused to grant permission to the consent phrases finalised by an agricultural affiliation of villagers with tenants, observing that the proposed phrases are an try to bypass the statutory framework laid down within the Goa, Daman and Diu Agricultural Tenancy Act, 1964 and likewise violates the Goa Land Use (Regulation) Act, 1991.
The apex courtroom was listening to an enchantment filed by the ‘Comunidade’ – an agricultural affiliation of villagers that has properties in widespread – of Tivim concerning a tenancy dispute over two properties in Tivim village in Bardez taluka, Goa. The properties had been leased by the Comunidade to tenants in 1978.
A civil go well with was filed by the predecessor of personal respondents for getting into their title as tenants within the survey numbers for the 2 properties. The go well with was decreed in 1986 and the title of the predecessor of respondents was entered as tenant of properties. After the predecessor handed away, the personal respondents filed a tenancy software earlier than a trial courtroom.
In 2017, the trial courtroom allowed the tenancy software, declaring the personal respondents as agricultural tenants of the properties. Aggrieved by the declaration of tenancy, the Comunidade filed an enchantment earlier than the Appellate Court docket, which stays pending. Throughout pendency of the enchantment, the Comunidade resolved that as a compromise, the land in dispute be bifurcated, with 60 p.c of the land being allotted to the tenants and 40 p.c land to be retained by the Comunidade. The Administrative Tribunal refused to grant permission to the Comunidade for submitting of the consent phrases in 2023 below Article 154 (3) of the Code of Communides. The Comunidade then filed a writ petition within the Excessive Court docket, which upheld the Tribunal’s determination final 12 months.
The Supreme Court docket held that the executive tribunal has rightly refused to grant permission to the consent phrases finalised by the Comunidade.
Within the judgment, a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Ok Vinod Chandran mentioned, “…the proposed consent phrases or the compromise sought to be entered by the appellant with the personal respondents falls foul of each the statutes i.e. the Tenancy Act and the Land Use Act, in as far as it creates freehold possession rights over tenanted land, with out resorting to the process contemplated for the acquisition of such land by the tenant and secondly, given that these phrases successfully enable the appellant, in addition to the personal respondents, to make use of an agricultural land for non agricultural functions.”
The courtroom mentioned the compromise not solely circumvents procedural points of the Tenancy Act, but in addition permits the events to make use of the go well with properties for a function which is expressly barred by the Land Use Act.
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“The compromise sought by the events is nothing however an abuse of the method of legislation. The so-called compromise or settlement is a ploy to defeat the provisions of legislation and due to this fact it has been rightly denied the authorized sanctity which was sought. If the proposed consent phrases are to be allowed, not solely would the tenant be conferred full possession rights, in full disregard of the process for buy talked about above, however it will additionally imply that the tenant could be conferred a proper to alienate land, with out looking for permission of any statutory authority,” the Court docket mentioned.
“It’s abundantly clear that by the use of the proposed compromise, the events have primarily terminated the tenancy, with out recourse to any of the modes referred to in Part 9 of the [Tenancy] Act,” the courtroom added.