Must a party participate in an enquiry ordered on a time-barred notice merely because no adverse order has yet been passed?

No. Where the revisionary power was invoked well beyond the prescribed limitation, the exercise is vitiated in its very inception and requiring the owner or his successors-in-interest to participate in such an enquiry cannot be sustained. The Division Bench was not justified in opining that, as no adverse order had been passed yet, the learned Judge ought not to have interfered — the more so as third-party interests had come into existence long before the notice was issued.

Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — s.56(3) proviso — s.56(1) — s.52 — s.25 — s.24 — Power of revision — Three-year limitation — Record of rights — City Title Survey numbers — Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — s.56(3) proviso — Revision beyond three years — Power without mooring in the statute — Held: Revisional power over an order against which no appeal has been preferred may be exercised only within three years from the date of that order; invocation of the power decades later is without any mooring in the statute and vitiated in its very inception. (¶16) Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — s.52 — Limitation Act, 1963 — Application confined to appeals — Held further: Section 52 applies Sections 4, 5 and 12 of the Limitation Act, 1963 to appeals alone. Those provisions cannot be smuggled in to negate and defeat the limitation prescribed by the proviso to Section 56(3). (¶11) Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — s.24 — s.25 — Allotment of CTS numbers — Administrative, not quasi-judicial — Held further: Allotment of City Title Survey numbers by a Revenue/Survey Officer is merely an administrative exercise and not quasi-judicial; it cannot be equated with an order of a Revenue Court, so the amended Section 25 and its proviso are of no avail. (¶13) Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 — s.56(1) — Enquiry on a time-barred notice — Interference before any adverse order — On facts, held: A party cannot be required to participate in an enquiry founded on power invoked well beyond the prescribed limitation merely because no adverse order has yet been passed. Appeals allowed; the notice quashed. (¶16, 17)

One judgment a day. That's the whole habit.

Read the full text of M.R.R. Setty (Dead), by LRs v. Government of Karnataka and others — and get the Supreme Court's output as a five-minute daily read, with plain-language headnotes and the questions each judgment settles.

Free forever plan · 30 seconds · data stays in India