This judgment decides the appeal against the Allahabad High Court's order. It upholds the High Court's direction that the Deputy Director of Consolidation restore the allotment of the plot to the original tenure holders; the restoration itself is to be carried out by the consolidation authorities under that direction, and the judgment does not decide any other consolidation dispute in the village.
- Case
- Rama Pandey and Others v. Ram Lal (Dead) through LR and Others
- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Decision
- Citation
- 2026 INSC 1199
- Bench
- S.V.N. Bhatti; N.V. Anjaria
- Judgment by
- S.V.N. Bhatti
- Case numbers
- SLP(C) No. 15053/2017; Diary No. 13205/2017
- Outcome
- Civil appeal arising out of SLP(C) No. 15053 of 2017 dismissed; the Allahabad High Court's judgment setting aside the Deputy Director of Consolidation's order dated 31 December 1992 stands. No order as to costs.
Appeal dismissed; High Court's restoration order stands
The Supreme Court has dismissed a civil appeal challenging the Allahabad High Court's order in a decades-old consolidation dispute over a roadside plot in Basti district, Uttar Pradesh, and has left the High Court's direction — that the plot be restored to its original tenure holders — in place.
A Bench of Justice S.V.N. Bhatti and Justice N.V. Anjaria delivered the judgment on 5 November 2026. The appeal arose from the High Court's judgment in Civil Writ Petition No. 1895 of 1993, in which the High Court had set aside the Deputy Director of Consolidation's order dated 31 December 1992.
The Court said it saw no ground to interfere with the impugned judgment. It dismissed the civil appeal and made no order as to costs, disposing of any pending applications accordingly.
A roadside plot, allotted to strangers in 1978
The subject matter of the appeal is Plot No. 159 of village Barahpur Pandey, Pargana Amorha, Tehsil Harraiya, District Basti, Uttar Pradesh. Consolidation operations began in the village on 12 October 1973 under section 4(2) of the Uttar Pradesh Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1953, and the plot was included in the Statement of Principles prepared on 12 October 1974.
When the provisional Consolidation Scheme was published on 3 April 1978, the Assistant Consolidation Officer carved out chaks and allotted portions of the plot to the appellants. The appellants admitted that they had no right in the subject matter. Possession of the chaks was delivered to the allottees on 28 April 1982. The respondents, who claimed to be the original tenure holders, complained that they had been displaced from the roadside plot and allotted udan chaks elsewhere.
The dispute then travelled through the consolidation hierarchy. On 13 January 1986, the Assistant Director of Consolidation allowed the respondents' revision with connected revisions, set aside the allotment scheme, and remanded the matter to the Consolidation Officer to carve out the chaks afresh. On remand, the Consolidation Officer again confirmed the allotment in favour of the appellants on 6 June 1992. The Settlement Officer of Consolidation, after a spot inspection, held on 18 September 1992 that the plot abuts the main road, that the original right holders had not been properly allotted, and that the plot had been included in the consolidation contrary to procedure and government circulars. The Deputy Director of Consolidation reversed that order on 31 December 1992, and the respondents challenged that reversal before the High Court.
Could roadside land of commercial value be allotted to non-holders?
The question in the appeal was whether the consolidation authorities could include a commercially valuable roadside plot in the consolidation scheme and allot it to persons who had no tenure right in it, displacing the original tenure holders.
The appellants' case was that the objections to the provisional allotment of 28 April 1982 had been raised nearly four years later, that the circular dated 9 September 1988 did not apply, that the respondents had themselves been granted lands abutting the plot, and that the High Court had proceeded on the erroneous assumption that only one revision was pending before the Deputy Director of Consolidation.
The respondents' case was that the consolidation had been undertaken contrary to the extant circulars, that it removed persons entitled to confirmation of the plot and allotted them elsewhere, and that the roadside land should not have been included in the consolidation in the first place. They added that the four-year period relied on by the appellants was inapplicable once the Consolidation Officer's order had been set aside for apparent illegalities.
BANTHRY ANALYSISRoadside land and the tenure holder's claim
The High Court's reasoning, which the Supreme Court approved, rested on two sources. The first was the circulars: clause 5 of the circular dated 9 September 1988, reinforcing the earlier circular dated 26 May 1981, directs that roadside lands of commercial value should not be included in consolidation operations. The second was the principle under section 19 of the 1953 Act, read with those circulars: such land ought to be excluded from the consolidation scheme, and even if retained, it ought to be allotted to the persons who were its original tenure holders.
The Assistant Director of Consolidation's 1986 order had already recorded why the allotment was suspect: the main village roads lead towards Ayodhya, where the market is situated, giving roadside land high commercial value; persons with no original holding near the road had been arbitrarily allotted chaks on the road, while others received roadside areas far exceeding their original holdings; and the consolidation records contained incorrect postings, discrepancies in valuation and area, and entries that did not match the Sector Register.
The High Court also dealt with a valuation point. A valuation had been assigned to the plot, which the petitioners had apparently not questioned under section 8-A of the Act, so the Settlement Officer could not justify excluding the land from consolidation under section 11-A. But that valuation, the High Court held, ought to have been adjusted against the land to be allotted to the petitioner — and the Deputy Director had committed manifest illegality in allotting roadside land to strangers while rejecting the tenure holder's claim.
Spot inspection preferred; the allotment had no valid reason
The Supreme Court noted the parties' submissions and perused the record. It observed that the record did not make it clear whether the valuation of the plot or its physical location had been properly considered in the consolidation proceedings, and that the appellants admittedly held no right in the subject matter while the respondents were the original tenure holders.
The Court gave preference to the Settlement Officer of Consolidation's spot inspection report and order dated 18 September 1992, which made it clear that the plot abuts the highway. The inclusion of the plot in the consolidation and its allotment to the appellants, who had no preferential right, was not supported by any valid reason, the Court held, and the Deputy Director had recorded only mechanical reasons for setting aside the Settlement Officer's order.
The Court concluded that the High Court had been right to interfere with the Deputy Director's order, was well within its jurisdiction, and had recorded findings on the Deputy Director's erroneous approach. The appellants' contentions, it said, were merely noted and did not outweigh the reasoning adopted in the impugned judgment.
Dismissed, with the High Court's two-month direction intact
The appeal fails and is dismissed. The Allahabad High Court's judgment stands, including its direction to the Deputy Director of Consolidation to issue a fresh order restoring the allotment of the plot to the original tenure holders in their respective ratios within two months, with possession to be restored within a further two months.
The High Court had also rejected the petitioners' plea of equity based on structures raised on the land, because the constructions had been raised in haste after the Deputy Director's order dated 31 December 1992, even though the writ petition had been filed in January 1993 and an interim stay had been granted on 29 January 1993. That rejection is not disturbed by the Supreme Court's dismissal of the appeal.
The judgment is marked non-reportable. It was delivered on 5 November 2026 and bears the neutral citation 2026 INSC 1199.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students
This case turns on a simple idea that runs through consolidation law: consolidation rearranges holdings to make farming viable; it is not a device to take commercially valuable roadside land from its tenure holders and hand it to strangers. The circulars and section 19 of the 1953 Act give that idea legal form, and the Court applied them to the facts the spot inspection had established.
Notice how the Court treats delay. The appellants' strongest procedural point was that objections came nearly four years after the 1982 allotment. The respondents' answer, recorded in paragraph 9, was that the four-year period was inapplicable once the Consolidation Officer's order had been set aside for apparent illegalities — arbitrary allotments, incorrect records, and a failure to consider location and valuation — and the Court's dismissal, which turned on the merits in paragraphs 10–11, did not treat the delay as decisive.
Also note the evidentiary weight the Court gives to a spot inspection. The Settlement Officer's inspection established the one fact on which everything turned: the plot abuts the main road. When a fact-finding authority has seen the land, an appellate court will hesitate to prefer paper reasoning over it — which is why the Court said, in terms, that preference was given to the spot inspection.
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- The appellants admitted they had no right in the subject matter, yet the consolidation authorities allotted the roadside plot to them. On what basis did the Supreme Court hold that allotment unsustainable, and what role did the spot inspection report play in that conclusion?
- The High Court relied on circulars dated 26 May 1981 and 9 September 1988. What did those circulars direct about roadside lands of commercial value, and how did the Court apply them to Plot No. 159?
- The appellants argued that the objections to the 1982 allotment came nearly four years late. Why did the Court not treat that delay as decisive, and what does that tell you about delay when the underlying order is set aside for apparent illegalities?
