The High Court on Wednesday vindicated the stand of the state government in declaring the 1,635 acres at Kokapet (Asadnagar) as government land under the Sarf-e-Khas (Merger) Regulation.
It was a big relief to the government as it struck deals with real estate companies which purchased about 70 acres of this land in auction.
Allowing a batch of writ appeals by the state government and the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority challenging an order of the single judge, a division bench comprising justices Goda Raghuram and R.Subhash Reddy said the memo issued by the government on May 21, 2005 declaring the land as government land was not susceptible to invalidation by the court in exercise of its power of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution.
In 2009, the single judge had set aside the memo by declaring that it was against the principles of natural justice.
KSB Ali and others who claimed to be legal heirs to Nawab Nusrat Jung Bahadur-I have been fighting for title over the land. Their contention was that at no point of time was the land resumed to the state government under any enactment, except that possession thereof was taken consequent upon the death of the nawab, in the limited context of determining the legal heirs who succeeded to it.
The legal heirs of Nusrat Jung have been fighting for the land since 1960 and the government also issued certain circulars and memos from time to time based on court orders.
In 2002 the government issued a memo by declaring that there was no need to mutate the names of the legal heirs in the Muntakhab and then it issued two other memos in 2004 by stating that the Muntakhab was to be implemented.