Limitation Act 1963

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.

Property, immovable, possession of

Owner must act against squatter within 12 years: SC

AmitAnand Choudhary, August 8, 2019: The Times of India

Owner must act within 12 yrs or squatter will get rights: SC

‘Doesn’t Apply To Encroachers On Public Land’

New Delhi:

If a rightful owner of an immovable property fails to take action to get back possession within the limitation period then his rights are lost and person in possession acquires an absolute title, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, but held that no benefit of adverse possession should be given to people who encroach upon public land.

As per the Limitation Act 1963, the statutory period of limitation that is allowed for possession of immovable property or any interest is 12 years in the case of private property and 30 years for public property, from the date the trespasser occupies the property.

Enumerating the provisions of the Act, a bench of Arun Mishra, S Abdul Nazeer and M R Shah said the law provided shield to a person who is in possession of the property beyond 12 years and that person can take action by filing a suit for restoration of possession in case of dispossession.

“We hold that a person in possession cannot be ousted by another person except by due procedure of law and once 12-years’ period of adverse possession is over, even owner’s right to eject him is lost and the possessory owner acquires right, title and interest possessed by the outgoing person/owner as the case may be against whom he has prescribed. In our opinion, consequence is that once the right, title or interest is acquired, it can be used as a sword by the plaintiff as well as a shield by the defendant within ken of Article 65 of the Act and any person who has perfected title by way of adverse possession, can file a suit for restoration of possession in case of dispossession,” the bench said.

It said a person who has perfected his title by way of adverse possession can file a suit for obtaining an injunction protecting possession and for recovery of possession in case his dispossession. “In case a person in adverse possession has perfected his title, after the extinguishment of the title of the true owner, he can’t be dispossessed by a true owner as the owner has lost his right, title and interest,” it said.