Case Law Details
Brij Narayan Shukla the LRS. Vs Sudesh Kumar alias Suresh Kumar (D) thr. LRs. & Ors. (Supreme Court of India)
It is certainly in the fitness of things that the Supreme Court in a most learned, laudable, landmark, logical and latest judgment titled Brij Narayan Shukla vs Sudesh Kumar Alias Suresh Kumar & Ors in Civil Appeal No. 7502 of 2012 and cited in Neutral Citation No.: 2024 INSC 9 that was pronounced as recently as on January 3, 2024 has set aside a judgment of Allahabad High Court that had allowed a suit for claiming rights by adverse possession and held that ownership and possession of land cannot be claimed through permissive possession arising from tenancy. Additionally, there was no possibility of asserting adverse possession in this context. The Apex Court thus affirmed the appellant’s ownership from the sale deed in 1966 and very rightly rejected the High Court’s reasoning. We thus see that the Apex Court very rightly allowed the appeal.
At the very outset, this remarkable, robust, rational and recent judgment authored by Hon’ble Mr Justice Vikram Nath for a Bench of Apex Court comprising of himself and Hon’ble Mr Justice Rajesh Bindal sets the ball in motion by first and foremost putting forth in para 1 that, “The plaintiff is in appeal assailing the correctness of the judgment and order dated 15.05.2012 passed by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court allowing Second Appeal No.202 of 1980, Sudesh Kumar and others vs. Brij Narayan Shukla and others, whereby, both the judgments of the First Appeal Court and the Trial Court were set aside and the suit of the plaintiff appellant was dismissed on the ground of limitation being barred by time.”
To put things in perspective, the Bench then envisages in para 2 while elaborating on the facts of the case that, “Dispute relates to an area of 3500 sq. ft. (70 ft. x 50 ft.) (2 Biswa 12 Biswani) of Plot No.1019 situated in Village Hardoi within the limits of Nagar Palika Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh. The plaintiff claimed title through a registered sale deed dated 21.01.1966 from the erstwhile Zamindar Rai Bahadur Mohan Lal. They also claimed to have received possession pursuant to the sale deed. It is also relevant to mention that the land purchased was an open piece of land. In 1975, when the appellant tried to raise the construction over the land purchased, the defendants objected and caused hindrance giving rise to the filing of the suit in question on 28.05.1975, registered as O.S.No.161 of 1975 praying for the relief of injunction with alternative relief for possession.”
As it turned out, the Bench enunciates in para 3 that, “The defendant respondent filed their written statement primarily alleging that there had been prior proceedings between Rai Bahadur Mohan Lal and his co-sharers and their tenants (ancestors of the respondent) in the year 1944 where a suit was filed for arrears of rent with respect to Plot No.1019, 1022 and 1023.
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