Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court has sent a tribal land restoration dispute back to the Deori ( Gondia ) tehsildar, holding that the exact date on which the Gond community was recognised as a Scheduled Tribe (ST) is crucial to deciding whether agricultural land transferred in 1973 can be restored under the Maharashtra Restoration of Lands to Scheduled Tribes Act, 1974.




Justice Nandesh Deshpande last month quashed the tehsildar’s Aug 18, 2020, order and Maharashtra Revenue Tribunal ’s Dec 15, 2021, ruling in a dispute involving two parcels of agricultural land in Deori. He directed the tehsildar to reconsider the claim after examining the relevant date and the legal position laid down in an earlier full bench judgment.




Petitioner Prashant Sangidwar , represented by counsel Shreya Jain, claimed lawful ownership and possession of the properties. The respondents approached the tehsildar in March 2018, seeking restoration under the 1974 Act. They said govt had granted the land to their father after his agricultural property was acquired for Shirpur Dam project.




The tehsildar ruled in Sangidwar’s favour in Aug 2020, but the respondents filed an appeal. The tribunal allowed their appeal in Dec 2021, setting aside the tehsildar’s order and prompting the petitioner to approach HC.




Sangidwar challenged the restoration application as time-barred and argued that the land was a govt grant linked to a dam project, rather than ancestral property. He also questioned whether the statutory and procedural requirements for restoration had been met.




A central argument concerned the registered sale deed dated Feb 7, 1973. The petitioner contended that the Gond community in Bhandara and Gondia districts was recognised as a Scheduled Tribe only in 1976 and, therefore, the respondents did not qualify as tribals under the 1974 Act.




The judge noted that the tribunal had itself recorded the community’s recognition as tribal in 1976. He referred to an earlier full bench ruling that subsequent recognition of a community as tribal does not entitle a person to restoration of land transferred to a non-tribal before that recognition.




Justice Deshpande found that the record did not clearly establish the precise date on which the community was included and recognised as a Scheduled Tribe for the purposes of the Act. Since the transaction predated the stated year of recognition, that date was material to determining the respondents’ entitlement to restoration.




The court, therefore, refrained from deciding the underlying claim and remanded the matter to the tehsildar for fresh adjudication. The tehsildar must consider the full bench judgment and give both sides an opportunity to be heard, it said.