The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed appeals by private claimants, including companies associated with real estate businessman Ponnapula Venkata Sanjeev Prasad, alias “Goldstone Prasad,” and upheld the state government’s ownership of 550.39 acres in Survey Nos. 100 and 101 of Miyapur. The ruling is a major relief to the state. The land is worth thousands of crores of rupees.
A bench of Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma affirmed the April 16, 2003 judgment of the then Andhra Pradesh High Court. The High Court had held that the land is government poramboke and that the private claimants were land-grabbers under the Andhra Pradesh Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act. The appellants were several cooperative societies, housing societies, private entities and individuals, who the courts found had relied on fabricated documents and revenue entries made with the collusion of revenue officials.
The bench held that fraudulent revenue entries, invalid historical claims and later transactions cannot confer ownership of land that has vested in the state. Subsequent registrations and official permissions, it said, cannot cure the defects in the claimants’ title. The court also rejected the plea of adverse possession as unproven, noting that an inspection on October 19, 1995 found the property to be wasteland covered with boulders, with no cultivation or visible possession by the claimant.
The dispute involved claims routed through different sources, including the alleged heirs of former jagirdar Mohammad Khaisaruddin Khan. Companies associated with Prasad, among other entities, figured in the competing claims. The 1912 survey classified 277.5 acres in Survey No. 100 and 273.34 acres in Survey No. 101 as sarkari poramboke, a classification reflected in the classer register and sethwar. The Reilly Commission’s 1927 report on paigah estates recommended restoring Miyapur village to Rafi-un-nisa Begum, but the Nizam’s Firman Isfandar 1338 Fasli made clear that such grants did not confer absolute private ownership on jagirdars or their heirs.
A crucial finding concerned the revenue records. The name of Raheemunnisa Begum, wife of Abdul Salam, was inserted as pattedar in the pahanies for 1950-51 to 1952-53, while other columns continued to describe the land as government poramboke. These entries appeared after jagirs were abolished on August 15, 1949, when the land had already vested in the state. The bench found no order authorising any transfer or mutation, noted that the entries were absent from the faisal patti and pucca book, and upheld the findings that they were bogus, unauthorised and the product of fraud involving revenue officials.
The court also rejected the claim of another group of appellants, who traced title through Nawab Mohammad Khaisaruddin Khan on the basis of an alleged oral gift. It noted that Khan had applied for muntakhab for the paigah villages, including Miyapur, before the Nazim Atiyat. The tahsildar later permitted Raheemunnisa Begum to alienate 140 acres in Survey No. 100 without reference to those proceedings. The bench held that this permission was issued without jurisdiction and without hearing the relevant parties, and ignored both the abolition of jagirs and the concluded Atiyat proceedings.
The land has been at the centre of a criminal investigation since 2017. Crime No. 366 of 2017 was registered at Kukatpally police station on May 25, 2017 against Trinity Infraventures, Suvishal Power Generation Ltd, Prasad and his relatives P. Indrani Prasad, Mahita Prasad Caddel and Sunita Prasad, who are directors of the company. The prosecution alleged that Trinity executed four documents in favour of Suvishal Power covering government land in four Miyapur survey numbers, two of them relating to Survey Nos. 100 and 101. The then sub-registrar was named in the FIR and arrested. The prosecution further alleged that general powers of attorney and purported sanad deeds were used to transfer rights over about 802.4 acres of alleged government land in Survey Nos. 20, 28, 100 and 101, a allegation the Supreme Court recorded in April 2018 while considering Trinity’s plea to stay the criminal proceedings.
Although a large extent of the land has been encroached and structures, including multi-storey residential complexes, have come up, a considerable extent of vacant land remains available for the government to use. With the Supreme Court’s order, occupants of the built-up portions will have to regularise their structures.