Patna: In a significant ruling with far-reaching implications for landholders across Bihar, the Patna high court has criticised the state’s practice of cancelling decades-old Jamabandi entries, describing such actions as “autocratic” and contrary to settled legal principles.Jamabandi is the revenue record through which the state recognises a landholder as a tenant for the purpose of collecting land rent.Allowing a writ petition filed by Krishna Kumar Goenka, a single bench of Justice Sourendra Pandey observed that revenue officers were “rampantly” bypassing binding judicial precedents while cancelling long-standing Jamabandi entries.The high court reiterated its consistent legal position that a Jamabandi continuing in govt revenue records for more than 30 years cannot be cancelled by revenue authorities unless the state first establishes its illegality before a competent civil court.The order was uploaded on the high court’s website on June 22 and became available on Friday.Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Sumeet Kumar Singh submitted that his client had been regularly paying rent to the state govt for the past 60 years for his ancestral land in Khaira circle of Jamui district.Singh argued that the dispute arose after the Khaira circle officer suddenly stopped accepting rent from Goenka. When this action was challenged before the high court, the revenue authorities went a step further and cancelled the long-standing Jamabandi despite repeated rulings of the high court protecting such entries.Expressing strong disapproval of the approach adopted by the revenue authorities, Justice Pandey observed, “Such revenue officers are passing orders in excess of their jurisdictions. Even if they are adamant to annul the decades old Jamabandi of any land holder, they must take a decree from a civil court to that effect.”The court emphasised that executive authorities could not override settled law by unilaterally cancelling long-standing revenue records and that only a competent civil court could determine the legality of such Jamabandi entries.Granting relief to the petitioner, the high court directed the concerned revenue authorities to immediately accept rent from Goenka and issue the corresponding rent receipts.
