justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri said the official had passed the eviction order purposefully to help the petitioner. “Despite the fact that the Act has been in force for nearly 125 years, even today, the revenue officials have not understood the purport of the Act. This Court has been forced to repeatedly quash such illegal orders passed by such errant revenue officials

Revenue officials lack understanding of Land Encroachment Act, criticizes Madras HC
“Despite the fact that the Act has been in force for nearly 125 years, even today, the revenue officials have not understood the purport of the Act.

MADURAI: Criticising that many revenue officials lack a proper understanding of the Tamil Nadu Land Encroachment Act, 1905, and pass illegal orders to help encroachers, the Madurai Bench of Madras Court recently imposed Rs 10,000 cost on a zonal deputy tahsildar from Devakottai for failing to follow proper procedure while removing an encroachment in Sivagangai.

Hearing a plea filed by the alleged encroacher against the eviction order issued by the official last month, a Bench of justices R Subramanian and L Victoria Gowri said the official had passed the eviction order purposefully to help the petitioner.

“Despite the fact that the Act has been in force for nearly 125 years, even today, the revenue officials have not understood the purport of the Act. This Court has been forced to repeatedly quash such illegal orders passed by such errant revenue officials. We are sure that these orders have not stemmed out of ignorance, but out of corrupt activities. The object behind such an attitude is to help the encroachers,” the judges observed.

They further explained that Section 7 of the Act requires the tahsildar or authorised officer to give a show cause notice to the alleged encroacher, giving him time to submit objections. The officer should then consider the objections and pass further orders under Section 6, they added and said, “This very simple procedure is not being followed by the concerned authorised officers all over the State with a view to helping the encroachers.”

In the present case as well, the Devakottai zonal deputy tahsildar had directly issued an eviction notice to the petitioner without giving show cause notice, the judges noted. They quashed the eviction order and directed the official to pay Rs 10,000 cost to MS Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, before May 30.