Supreme Court: Notice Granting Time For Objections Can’t Co-Exist With Final Decision U/S 35(1) Indian Forest Act Without Rendering Statutory Hearing Illusory
The Supreme Court clarified that mutation entries are ministerial in nature and cannot perfect an acquisition that lacks the statutory predicates.
Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Prasanna B. Varale, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court held that a notice that grants time for objections cannot coexist with a final decision under Section 35(1) of the Indian Forest Act, 1927 (IFA) without rendering the statutory hearing illusory.
The Court held thus in a batch of 96 Civil Appeals arising from the Judgment of the Bombay High Court, which declined to interfere with the revenue mutations and annotations that described the subject lands as affected by forest proceedings and as having vested in the State.
The two-Judge Bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Prasanna B. Varale observed, “In our opinion, the controlling legal position is settled. For vesting to occur under Section 3(1) of the MPFA Act on the footing of Section 2(f)(iii), a notice under Section 35(3) of the IFA must not only be issued but must also be served upon the landholder. The expression “issued” in Section 2(f)(iii) of the MPFA Act comprehends due service on the owner, because service alone triggers the owner’s right to object, including the jurisdictional plea that the land is not a forest within Section 2(c-i) of the MPFA Act, and obliges the State to consider such objection. We are unable to agree with the High Court that the reproduction of a draft text of Section 35(1) beneath a Section 35(3) show cause in the Gazette amounts to a concluded notification under Section 35(1) of the IFA. A notice that grants time for objections cannot coexist with a final decision under Section 35(1) without rendering the statutory hearing illusory.”
The Bench clarified that mutation entries are ministerial in nature and cannot perfect an acquisition that lacks the statutory predicates. It added that they neither create title in the State nor divest title from the private owner.
Senior Advocates Vineet Naik, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Ajit Kumar Sinha, Vinay Navare, Aniruddha Joshi, Shyel Trehan, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Anil Kaushik, C.U. Singh, Siddharth Bhatnagar, Prasenjit Keswani, Madhavi Divan, Guru Krishna Kumar, Atul Y Chitale, Sanjay R Hegde, and Gaurav Agrawal appeared for the Appellants, while Senior Advocates Balbir Singh and K. Parameshwwar appeared for the Respondents.
Factual Background
The Appellants were the landowners in the State of Maharashtra. The Respondent-State authorities asserted that during the early 1960s, notices under Section 35(3) of the IFA were issued and published in the Official Gazette. The stated purpose of these notices was to call upon owners of lands described as forest to show cause why regulatory measures under Section 35(1) of the IFA should not be made and to afford them an opportunity of objection and hearing, including interim restraint as contemplated by Section 35(4) of the IFA. Such notices were addressed to the Appellants and to other similarly placed private landholders in the concerned districts. The landowners alleged that such notices were not personally served as contemplated by Section 35(5) of the IFA, that no inquiry on objections was ever held, and that no proceedings culminated in a final notification under Section 35(1) of the IFA. They stated that the proceedings then lay dormant for extended periods.
The Maharashtra Private Forests Acquisition Act, 1975 (MPFA Act) commenced in 1975 and the landowners alleged that even after its commencement, the State authorities did not take possession and for decades the lands continued to be dealt with as private holdings. Beginning around 2001, the authorities initiated an administrative exercise to annotate village records so as to reflect affectation by forest proceedings and vesting under the MPFA Act. It was alleged that mutations were made without prior notice and without adherence to the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966 (MLRC). Sub-Registrars declined registration of instruments having regard to departmental instructions. Possession nonetheless remained with private parties. Hence, Writ Petitions were filed seeking correction of records, declaratory relief regarding title and vesting, and restoration of entries consistent with private title and possession. As the High Court declined to interfere in the case, the case was before the Apex Court.
Reasoning
The Supreme Court after hearing the arguments from both sides, noted, “On the facts across these appeals, we find that the essential links in the statutory chain are missing. There is no proof of service of any Section 35(3) notice of the IFA on the then owners. There is no final notification under Section 35(1) of the IFA. Actual possession has at all times remained with private owners and this position is reflected in the revenue records that describe them as occupants. No possession was taken under Section 5 of the MPFA Act, no schemes were set in motion under Section 4, no compensation exercise was undertaken under Section 7, and no inquiry under Section 6 was held at a time proximate to the appointed day of 30 August 1975.”
The Court said that the materials produced by the State include undated and unverified possession papers that do not inspire confidence when set against decades of undisturbed private possession.
“In one instance the State relies on a pipeline notice which was addressed to a person who was not the owner as on 29 or 30 August 1975. In another, the land forms part of an industrial estate converted to non-agricultural use long before 1975. In yet another, there was never any claim that a Section 35(3) notice was even issued. These features are wholly inconsistent with a completed vesting under Section 3(1) of the MPFA Act”, it added.
The Court remarked that satellite imagery and panchnamas drawn in 2016 do not establish the character of the lands on the appointed day, which is the only relevant date for Section 3(1) of the MPFA Act.
“A nineteenth century notification, invoked for the first time at the appellate stage to suggest linkage with a reserved forest, was not the foundation of the impugned mutations and cannot be used to improve the case now. The administrative orders must stand or fall on the reasons originally given and the High Court could not sustain vesting on grounds that were never the basis of action”, it emphasised.
The Court was of the view that absence of any notification under Section 34A of the IFA further weakens the State’s position. It affirmed that a restoration under Section 22A of the MPFA Act presupposes a lawful vesting.
“When the foundational vesting is unproven, any purported restoration cannot cure the defect, and in any event the limited window created by Section 22A cannot be reopened decades later. Expropriatory legislation must be construed strictly and Article 300-A of the Constitution requires that no person is deprived of property save by authority of law. When a statute prescribes a manner of doing a thing, it must be done in that manner or not at all. Here, several mandatory steps are absent. Any one missing step would defeat vesting. The High Court was therefore in error in treating the case as if only a consequential mutation remained”, it enunciated.
The Court further remarked that to hold that a subsequent purchaser is in a worse position than one who developed land would invert the logic of the statute and would reward illegality while penalising restraint.
“We are further of the view that a remand for an inquiry under Section 6 of the MPFA Act is neither warranted nor efficacious. Such an inquiry is designed to be contemporaneous with the appointed day so that meaningful evidence on the character of the land can be adduced by both sides. After the passage of nearly half a century, that exercise would be largely academic and would not cure the absence of the mandatory preconditions of a served notice under Section 35(3) of the IFA and a lawful progression towards a notification under Section 35(1)”, it observed.
Conclusion
The Court also said that the impugned Judgment rests on a misreading of the Gazette, an impermissible dilution of mandatory statutory steps, and reliance on materials that are extraneous to the original basis of action and it therefore cannot be sustained.
“… when a judgment minimizes a binding ratio, ignores missing statutory steps, and seeks to distinguish on immaterial facts, it creates an appearance of a reluctance to accept precedent. Such an approach conveys a measure of pettiness that is inconsistent with the detachment that judicial reasoning demands. In our view, this is an unfortunate departure from the discipline of stare decisis”, it added.
Moreover, the Court noted that the record discloses the same jurisdictional defect of non-service of a notice under Section 35(3) of the IFA, the same absence of a final notification under Section 35(1) of the IFA, and the same want of contemporaneous steps under Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the MPFA Act.
“In such circumstances the High Court could not, consistently with Article 141 of the Constitution, avoid the binding ratio by treating immaterial differences as determinative. In our opinion, fidelity to binding precedent and to the statutory scheme admits of no other conclusion than that the impugned order must be set aside”, it concluded.
Accordingly, the Apex Court allowed the Appeals, set aside the impugned Judgment, quashed the mutation orders, and directed corrections in the revenue records.
Cause Title- Rohan Vijay Nahar & Ors. v. The State of Maharashtra & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 129)
