Neighbour tried to grab land using a rectification deed without owner’s consent: Here's why Supreme Court offered relief to owner

The Supreme Court of India recently ruled that a person cannot, under the pretext of correcting a mistake, execute a rectification deed to change the identity number of their land to that of someone else’s land and on this ground claim the other person’s land, especially when the actual owner of such land did not give his consent.

This judgement arose from a case filed by the sons of late Mr Thimmadasappa, who owned two properties in Bangalore (identity number Sy. No.1/4 and Sy. No. 162). The land with identity number Sy no. 1/4 was sold multiple times and the last person to hold it is Mr K.M. Venkatamuniyappa. But for unknown reasons Venkatamuniyappa and a person called Govindappa executed a rectification deed which changed the land's identity number from Sy no. 1/4 to Sy no. 162. This created a dispute, since the land with identity number Sy no. 162 was not sold ever and Thimmadasappa owned it, but due to the rectification deed, Venkatamuniyappa lay his claim over it.

The Supreme Court had to step in this case to protect Thimmadasappa (landowner) from Venkatamuniyappa’s attempt to take over his land using a rectification deed. The court noted that the intention behind the rectification deed was not merely to fix a minor clerical error but to replace one property with a specific survey number with another entirely different property. Therefore, such a one-sided change could not strip the original landowner of his rights and title to this property.

Where is this land?

The land with identity number Sy. No. 1/4 is a piece of land measuring 1 acre 18 guntas in Bodhigere Village, Channarayapatna Hobli, Devanahalli, Bangalore. This land changed hands (resold) about three times.

The first sale of this land (Sy no. 1/4) was made by Thimmadasappa to someone called Venkatappa in 1971 (Sale Deed I). The second sale happened in 1972 when Venkatappa sold this land to someone called Govindappa (Sale Deed II). Thereafter, in 1973, Govindappa sold this land to Mr K.M. Venkatamuniyappa who was the last person to hold this land (Sale Deed III).

As mentioned earlier, Thimmadasappa also owned a second parcel of land with the survey number Sy no. 162. The story of the land goes back to the Temple of Lord Desha Narayanaswamy.

This land (Sy no. 162) was originally an Inam land that belonged to the temple. Thimmadasappa was a Barvardar of the Temple of Lord Desha Narayanaswamy. When the Inam system was abolished, this land was re-granted to Thimmadasappa in 1982, following which he remained in possession of it. Nobody sold this land, but before dying, Thimmadasappa executed a partition deed and divided the land between his sons.

So, that’s the history of the two lands (Sy no. 1/4 and Sy no. 162).

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What happened in 1997?

The real twist in the story happened in 1997, when Mr K.M. Venkatamuniyappa and Govindappa signed a rectification deed and renumbered their land’s sy no. from 1/4 to 162. In simple terms, this rectification deed meant that land with Sy no. 1/4 and Sy no. 162 are one and the same. However, in reality, the land with Sy no. 1/4 belonged to K.M. Venkatamuniyappa and Sy no. 162 land belonged to Thimmadasappa and these were two distinct lands.

The mutation records were, however, not updated, and sy no. 162 land continued to show Thimmadasappa’s name, but due to the change in survey number following the 1997 rectification deed, K.M. Venkatamuniyappa laid claim on this piece of land (sy no. 162).

In a nutshell, that’s how the land dispute started. K.M. Venkatamuniyappa wanted the court to cancel the partition deed and take away Thimmadasappa’s land from his sons. The sons fought all the way to the Supreme Court and on July 14, 2026, won the case and got back the land (Sy no. 162) that belonged to Late Thimmadasappa.

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Why Thimmadasappa's son won the case in Supreme Court

Adnan Siddiqui, Partner, King Stubb and Kasiva, said to ET Wealth Online: Thimmadasappa's sons won because Venkatamuniyappa's entire case rested on an assumption he never actually proved, that land with Survey No. 1/4 and the land with Survey No. 162, were one and the same piece of property.

The Supreme Court found this claim faltered at every stage. To begin with, the plaint itself never pleaded that the two survey numbers referred to the same land, and Indian civil procedure does not permit a court to grant relief on a case that was never actually pleaded.

According to Siddiqui, the matters were made worse by the Venkatamuniyappa's own admission during cross-examination that the two survey numbers were "totally different" properties, a statement that struck directly at the foundation of his suit.

However, despite this, the first appellate court had gone on to decree the suit purely by comparing boundary descriptions in the documents and speculating that boundaries had been "interchanged" between the deeds, without any survey record, map, or expert evidence to support that theory, and without it ever having been pleaded by Venkatamuniyappain the first place.

Compounding this, Siddiqui says that the rectification deed of 1997, on which Venkatamuniyappa's entire claim to Survey No. 162 depended, had been signed only by tVenkatamuniyappaand his immediate vendor (Govindappa), and not by Thimmadasappa, the original seller from 1971.

The Supreme Court thus held that a rectification deed can only correct a genuine clerical error in recording an already-agreed transaction; it cannot be used to substitute an entirely different property, and certainly not without the participation of the original transferor.

Siddiqui says: "Since Thimmadasappa never sold Survey No. 162, none of the subsequent buyers down the chain, including the Venkatamuniyappa, could have acquired title to it, in keeping with the basic legal principle that nobody can pass on a title they never held."

According to Siddiqui, Venkatamuniyappa's conduct only reinforced this outcome, since despite claiming ownership from 1997 onward, he made no effort to get the revenue records changed in his favour and waited a full decade before filing suit in 2007, a delay the Supreme Court treated as significant.

Siddiqui says: "Taken together, the Supreme Court concluded that the Karnataka High Court had committed a jurisdictional error by affirming a decree built on assumption and conjecture rather than pleadings and evidence, and it restored the trial court's original dismissal of the suit."

Supreme Court discussion

Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Vipul M Pancholi of Supreme Court of India heard this case. Here’s a brief overview of the Supreme Court discussion:

K.M. Venkatamuniyappa verified the mother deed of the land and admitted that Sy. No.1/4 and Sy. No.162 were distinct properties

The Supreme Court observed that the evidence on record, far from supporting K.M. Venkatamuniyappa, also showed that during cross-examination, he himself admitted that before purchasing, he had verified the mother deeds of the properties, and admitted that Sy. No.1/4 and Sy. No.162 were distinct properties.

Another error in his part was that Venkatamuniyappa never pleaded in court that Sy No. 1/4 and Sy No. 162 were the same property. The Supreme Court also observed that K.M. Venkatamuniyappa made no effort to establish that these two lands were the same through any survey records, village maps, phodi sketches or any contemporary revenue documents that showed that Sy. No.1/4 and Sy. No.162 were the same parcel of land.

Also, K.M. Venkatamuniyappa did not appoint any Commissioner or expert evidence to demonstrate the identity of the properties.

So the Supreme Court ruled that in the absence of any evidence about the said lands being the same, such an approach was clearly unsustainable in law.

Thimmadasappa’s consent was not taken when K.M. Venkatamuniyappa and Govindappa signed the 1997 rectification deed

The Supreme Court said that the 1997 rectification deed was executed only by Govindappa (K.M. Venkatamuniyappa’s vendor) and not by Thimmadasappa, the original executant of Sale Deed I.

The Supreme Court also observed that K.M. Venkatamuniyappa said that the land with Sy no. 162 originally belonged to Desha Narayanaswamy Temple and occupancy rights were given to Thimmadasappa only on August 5, 1982; yet, the Sale Deed I purportedly conveyed that the sale was for land with Sy. No.1/4.

This also proved that Sy No. 1/4 and Sy no. 162 were two different, distinct lands.

Section 43 of the Transfer of Property Act is not applicable here

The Supreme Court observed that the Karnataka High Court on its own, invoked Section 43 of the Transfer of Property Act by relying on the Supreme Court judgement of N. Venkateshappa v. Munemma (2016) 4 SCC 147 and relied on the principle that a re-grant of an Inam land may enure (serve) the benefit of an earlier alienee (a person who receives property or property rights through a transfer from another party) .

The Supreme Court said that this observation of the Karnataka High Court is incorrect as it was made in a ruling concerning the same lands that were transferred and re-granted.

In this case, Sy no. 1/4 land and Sy no. 162 are two different lands. To reiterate, Sy no. 162 land was Inam land of the Temple of Lord Desha Narayanaswamy and Sy no. 1/4 was Thimmadasappa’s private land which he sold and subsequently K.M. Venkatamuniyappa became its owner.

The Supreme Court said: “Once the identity of the suit schedule property itself is left in doubt, the legal consequences flowing from Section 43 of the ToP Act or from the law governing Inam re-grants do not arise for consideration at all.”

Section 26 of the SRA Act also can’t help K.M. Venkatamuniyappa

The Supreme Court observed that Section 26 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 kicked into operation on the assumption that the parties to an instrument had arrived at a common intention which, by reason of fraud or mutual mistake, was inaccurately reflected in the document executed between them.

The Supreme Court said: “Rectification, therefore, rectifies the expression of a concluded bargain; it does not substitute one bargain for another. The provision is intended to remove an error in recording the transaction and not to alter the essential subject matter of the transaction itself.”

This distinction assumes significance in light of the uniqueness in the facts of the present case as every sale deed (I, II, III) mentioned the land as Sy no. 1/4 but suddenly the 1997 rectification deed wanted to change the Sy no. to 162.

The Supreme Court repeated that this is not a case where an erroneous recital is corrected while preserving the identity of the property conveyed.

The Supreme Court said: “It is a case where the identity of the property itself stands altered. Such an exercise traverses beyond the permissible confines of Section 26 of the SR Act.”

A derivative title cannot outvalue the title from which is is derived

The Supreme Court said that the principle embodied in the maxim nemo dat quod non habet admits no exception in the present case.

No person can convey a better title than he himself possesses. If Thimmadasappa never conveyed Sy. No.162, Venkatappa acquired no title thereto. Govindappa too could not, therefore, acquire any such title. It necessarily follows that Govindappa could not convey Sy. No.162 to K.M. Venkatamuniyappa merely by executing a rectification deed.

The Supreme Court said: “A derivative title cannot outvalue the title from which it is derived.”

Thus the Supreme Court ruled that since Thimmadasappa continued to retain title to Survey No.162, notwithstanding the rectification deed executed by and between K.M. Venkatamuniyappa and Govindappa. The inclusion of the said property in the partition deed executed between Thimmadasappa and his sons cannot be faulted.

Thus, Thimmadasappa’s sons won the case and retained their father’s land with Sy No. 162.