Supreme Court: a ryotwari patta cannot be granted over a government tank, whatever the later revenue records say

The Supreme Court has upheld the cancellation of a ryotwari patta granted in 2011 over land in Thirumullaivoyal village, Tamil Nadu, that revenue records had recorded as a government tank, Kanakkan Pillai Kuttai, since a 1911 settlement register, while softening the consequences for flat buyers who had relied on it. Successive private owners sold the land, built on part of it, and in 2010 obtained a ryotwari patta from the District Revenue Officer on the claim that it was ordinary ryoti land. A third party challenged this before the Commissioner of Land Administration, who cancelled the patta in 2019, a decision the Madras High Court upheld.

Justice S.V.N. Bhatti held that Section 14-A of the Tamil Nadu Estates (Abolition and Conversion into Ryotwari) Act, 1948, inserted in 1974, bars the grant of a ryotwari patta over any private tank or oorani and renders any patta granted in violation void, and that a later municipal 'mixed residential zone' classification or a building permit cannot override this statutory bar. The Court held that land classification must be decided from the earliest revenue records, not from how the land is later used or recorded. However, because municipal and revenue authorities had themselves allowed the land's recorded character to change, misleading the twenty flat buyers who bought apartments built on part of it in good faith, the Court directed the State to allot them an alternative site before the illegal construction is demolished.