VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court, in a recent verdict, made it clear that an assigned land purchased in an open auction cannot be considered an assigned land and the government cannot include it in the list of prohibited lands. Doing so will be illegal.
Dealing with a batch of petitions filed by P Geetha, E Mohan Rami Reddy, M Vijayabhaskar Raju challenging the government’s orders including the assigned land they purchased in an open auction held by Primary Agriculture Cooperative Society (PACS), into the list of prohibited lands and subsequent proceedings by CCLA, Justice M Satyanarayana Murthy declared the orders including 10 acres of land in Kotramangalam village of Renigunta mandal in Chittoor district as illegal. He also canceled CCLA proceedings in this regard.
Giving the verdict in the case after hearing arguments on both sides, he said petitioners purchased the assigned land in an open auction. Their names were registered in revenue records as the owners of those lands and passbooks were issued. Subsequently, they had the land mutated as non-agricultural land, for which TUDA has given a non-objection certificate. After all these, how can the government go ahead and order to include those lands in the list of prohibited lands, he questioned.
The judge further mentioned that once the assigned land has been allocated, the government ceases to be its owner. Only after resuming the land following due procedures, it can claim to be the land owner. Till than the land owner is eligible to get loans from the banks or PACS pledging that land and if the assignee fails to free hisland, PACS or Banks can auction them and once the land is sold it become private patta land and it can not be entered into the list of prohibited lands, he said.