Recovering Possession of Immovable Property

In one line

Two routes back to land you have lost: the long one where you prove you own it, and the short one where you prove only that you were thrown off it.

In the words a student can write in an exam: section 5 of the Specific Relief Act 1963 provides that "A person entitled to the possession of specific immovable property may recover it in the manner provided by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908", which is a suit based on title. Section 6 provides a summary remedy: a person dispossessed without his consent of immovable property otherwise than in due course of law may recover possession by suit "notwithstanding any other title that may be set up in such suit", provided the suit is brought within six months of dispossession and not against the Government, and no appeal or review lies from the decree.

Why the law gives two remedies and not one

Section 5 is the ordinary remedy and it is the just one: the person with the better right to possess should have the land.

But it is slow. Title to land is proved by documents, mutations, revenue records and often by evidence going back decades, and a suit on title takes years. If that were the only route, a person who was strong enough to take possession by force would keep it for the length of the litigation, and the law would have given him the reward for his own wrong.

So section 6 offers a different bargain. Prove only that you were in possession and were thrown off without your consent and without due process, and you get the land back, and we will not even hear the defendant on his title. In exchange, the remedy is hedged with strict limits: six months, no suit against the Government, and no appeal.

The principle behind it, and the sentence to write: the object of section 6 is to discourage people from taking the law into their own hands, however good their title may be. Possession is to be changed by the court and not by force.

The provisions

Section 5:

"A person entitled to the possession of specific immovable property may recover it in the manner provided by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908."

Section 6:

"(1) If any person is dispossessed without his consent of immovable property otherwise than in due course of law, he or any person through whom he has been in possession or any person claiming through him may, by suit, recover possession thereof, notwithstanding any other title that may be set up in such suit.

(2) No suit under this section shall be brought

(a) after the expiry of six months from the date of dispossession; or

(b) against the Government.

(3) No appeal shall lie from any order or decree passed in any suit instituted under this section, nor shall any review of any such order or decree be allowed.

(4) Nothing in this section shall bar any person from suing to establish his title to such property and to recover possession thereof."