Gurgaon:Move civil court to claim ownership of Gwal Pahari land, says HC

Private land owners and the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) have been locked in a court battle over the ownership of the land, located in the foothills of the Aravallis.

While a hearing a case regarding the ownership of 464 acres of land in Gwal Pahari, a village in Gurgaon district, the Punjab and Haryana high court said on Friday that aggrieved parties will have to file petition in the civil court.

The ownership of the 464 acres in Gwal Pahari has been a matter of dispute since 1989. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

Private land owners and the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) have been locked in a court battle over the ownership of the land, located in the foothills of the Aravallis. The area’s proximity to Delhi and Faridabad had prompted several real estate developers to base their establishments there.

The bench of Justice SS Saron and Avneesh Jhingan dismissed the petition of the MCG seeking quashing of a former financial commissioner revenue (FCR) YS Malik’s order indicting five officials of the Gurgaon administration of sanctioning a mutation in favour of the MCG illegally.

“Therefore, the parties, who are affected by the entries in the revenue records or otherwise have a claim to title which is under a cloud, can get their rights determined by way of a civil suit and this court need not interfere in the same at this stage (sic),” observed the bench.

“In view of the above, the writ petition is disposed of by relegating the parties to the petition to avail their remedies before the civil court, if so advised (sic),” the bench said.

The bench also said that the civil court would be the appropriate forum for correction of revenue records, including the mutations. It said that even for claiming a title, the civil court would be the appropriate forum.

It is worth noting that FCR Malik in 2014, while hearing petition of three private land owners, had quashed Mutation No 3110 pertaining to 464 acres of Gwal Pahari land.

He did that on the basis that five senior officials of the Gurgaon administration between 2012 and 2014 had illegally sanctioned the mutation to deprive the three individual owners of their right to claim ownership after paying stamp duty to the revenue department.

“The dispute over the title or ownership of the land in question is to be resolved by the civil court only. The court said that no higher court can intervene in matters where the ownership of land is in question,” said lawyer of a private land owner who was present in the court.

“The court has said clearly stated that the civil court is right platform to resolve the dispute,” said Puneet Bali, a senior lawyer.

The ownership of the 464 cares became a matter of dispute in 1989 when original land owners of the village applied for partition before the district administration. They claimed that the land was contributed by their forefathers towards the common purpose of the village.