The Supreme Court has ruled that the State cannot be allowed to “appropriate” private property on the doctrine of “adverse possession”, as it would otherwise undermine the constitutional rights of citizens and erode public trust in the government.

Under the doctrine of “adverse possession” in immovable property disputes relating to land, a person who is in actual, continuous and uninterrupted “possession” of the disputed land has a right under the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, and the Limitation Act to claim ownership of the land based on such “adverse possession” or “hostile possession” against the original title holder, provided the latter is unable to establish his/her title to the same.

“Allowing the state to appropriate private property through adverse possession would undermine the constitutional rights of citizens and erode public trust in the government. Therefore, the appellant’s (government) plea of adverse possession is untenable in law,” a bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Prasanna Varale said in the judgment.

The court passed the judgment while dismissing an appeal jointly filed by the Haryana government and its public works department (PWD) challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court judgment of 2019 which had set aside the findings of a district court that had in 1987 taken a contrary view in a land dispute spanning over four decades.

In this case, the district court had quashed the original decree granted by a trial court in 1986 to the original land owners — Amin Lal and Ashok Kumar — and had ruled in favour of Haryana and the PWD after the private landowners in 1981 challenged the occupation of the land by the government and its instrumentality.

Dismissing the appeal, the Supreme Court said the Haryana government and the PWD did not specifically deny the plaintiffs’ ownership of the suit property. Instead, they primarily relied on the plea of adverse possession. “…It is a fundamental principle that the state cannot claim adverse possession over the property of its own citizens,” the apex court said.