(2015) 404 KLW 090 

IN THE HIGH COURT OF KERALA AT ERNAKULAM 

Dama Seshadri Naidu, J.

W.P.(C)No.6384 of 2015 W

Dated this the 10th day of April, 2015 

PETITIONER

MARIAM BEEVI

BY ADVS.SRI.SIRAJ KAROLY SRI.R.PARAMESWARA IYER 

RESPONDENTS

1. THE SECRETARY, ATHIRAMPUZHA GRAMA PANCHAYATH, ATHIRAMPUZHA GRAMA PANCHAYATH OFFICE, ATHIRAMPUZHA P.O, KOTTAYAM DISTRICT 686 562.

2. ATHIRAMPUZHA GRAMA PANCHAYATH, REP. BY ITS SECRETARY, PANCHAYATH OFFICE, ATHIRAMPUZHA P.O, KOTTAYAM TALUK, KOTTAYAM DISTRICT 686 562.

3. THE DISTRICT COLLECTOR, KOTTAYAM, COLLECTORATE, KANJIKUZHY, KOTTAYAM 686 001.

4. THE DIRECTOR OF PANCHAYATH, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM 695 001.

5. THE SECRETARY, LOCAL SELF ADMINISTRATION, GOVERNMENT OF KERALA,GOVT. SECRETARIAT, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM 695 001. 

R1-R2 BY ADV. SRI.RAJESH THOMAS R3-R5 BY GOVT. PLEADER SMT.C.K.SHERIN

JUDGMENT 

The issue in this writ petition is whether the road in question leading to the houses of the petitioner and six others is an exclusive private path, meant for the benefit of those seven persons; or a public road vested in the respondent Grama Panchayat, meant for the benefit of the general public.

2. Briefly stated, the petitioner, having a residential building within the limits of the respondent Grama Panchayat, shares a pathway with six others in the locality. The pathway, formed when an area of 71 cents of private land was plotted out by the owner of the property, was only meant to serve the needs of the houses constructed on either side of it. 

3. When the petitioner and her neighbours came to know in 2011 that the Panchayat had included the private pathway in its Asset Register around 2011, all of them submitted Exhibit P4 application to the Panchayat seeking the removal of the road from the Asset Register. Though there is no official reply, the then Panchayat secretary and Assistant Engineer of the Grama Panchayat are said to have informed the petitioner and others that the pathway had been removed from the Asset Register. After considerable lapse of time, now the respondent Grama Panchayat, without any manner of right, started laying interlocking blocks on a part of the road at the behest of the member of the ward.

4. Alarmed at the turn of events, the petitioner is said to have submitted to the first respondent Exhibit P5 application under the Right to Information Act to know how the Grama Panchayat could lay a road on a private path. Having not been heard from the Grama Panchayat, the petitioner has filed the present writ petition.

5. The learned counsel, in the above factual background, has strenuously contended that the Grama Panchayat has brought a private pathway into its Asset Register without following the due procedure. According to him, despite the property belonging to private persons, the Grama Panchayat has been making efforts to appropriate the pathway without even putting the petitioner and others on notice. In elaboration, the learned counsel would contend that it is being done at the behest of the ward member and two other interested persons who have an axe to grind.

6. The learned counsel has also contended that, if the respondent Panchayat completes the task of paving the road with the interlocking blocks, during the rainy season the water will flow down to the low-lying areas affecting the petitioner and other property owners.

7. The learned counsel, addressing himself to the statutory aspects of the issue, would contend that the Government has formed certain guidelines regarding the preparation of the Asset Register, but the Grama Panchayat has not followed the said guidelines, when it included the private pathway in the Asset Register. According to him, unless the owners of the property, in the present instance the petitioner and 6 others, relinquish the right in the property under the provisions of the 

Kerala Land Relinquishment Act, 1958

the Grama Panchayat would not get any manner of right over the pathway. In support of his submissions, the learned counsel has drawn my attention to sections 3 and 4 of the said Act.

8. Per contra, the learned counsel for the respondent Grama Panchayat has contended that the so-called private pathway, known as garden road, was included in the digitalised Asset Register in 2011. According to him, it is a long-standing demand of the people residing by the side of the road, as well as the common commuters, that the road be subjected to tarring or concrete work to avoid soil erosion during rainy season. In support of his submissions, the learned counsel has drawn my attention to Exhibit R1(c) representation before the second respondent seeking a properly laid road for their benefit. He has laid stress on the fact that Exhibit R1(c) was submitted, among others, by the petitioner's brother and also two other persons who are said to be the signatories to Exhibit P4.

9. The learned counsel for the Grama Panchayat has contended that, though laying a proper road is for the benefit of all, the petitioner seems to have been actuated by the fear that given the narrow width of the road, she may be compelled in future to part with a part of her property to widen the road. According to the learned counsel, by the time the petitioner filed the writ petition, the respondent Panchayat had completed 65% of the road work. The learned counsel has also contended that though the digitalised Asset Register was prepared in 2011, the property in question was found included in the Asset Register even prior to that period.

10. Adverting to 

Section 169 of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, 1994

the learned counsel contends that all the public roads west in the Grama Panchayat. Summing up his submissions the learned counsel would urge that unless this court vacated the interim order of status quo granted on 27.02.2015, the public interest would suffer immeasurably.

11. In reply, the learned counsel for the petitioner has strongly contested the statement made by the Grama Panchayat that the owners of the property on either side of the road have given any representation for laying a proper road. He has drawn my attention to Exhibit P6, which is said to be a representation dated 25.03.2015 said to have been submitted by the people in the vicinity declaring that they had never given any consent to lay the road. The learned counsel has also contended that unless the Grama Panchayat acquires the property by taking recourse to land acquisition proceedings, the question of vesting private property in the Grama Panchayat does not arise. According to him, there is no record to show how the private property is brought into the Asset Register of the Panchayat by following the due process. The road came into existence, contends the learned counsel, only in 2002; when the owner plotted out the property, he sold the individual plots along with right in the pathway, thereby collecting from the purchasers the cost of the pathway as well. In the end, the learned counsel has urged this court to order the Grama Panchayat to restore the road to its original condition at its own cost.

12. Heard the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned counsel for the respondent Grama Panchayat, apart from perusing the record.

13. I have already adumbrated the scope of adjudication Prefatorily at the beginning. Indeed, the petitioner has essentially raised a title dispute masquerading it as an invasion of his constitutional right to property by the local self-government, calling for a public law remedy under Article 226 of Constitution. It has, without much cavil, assumed aphoristic proportions to hold that under Article 226 of Constitution any infraction or invasion of an established constitutional or civil right by the state or any of its instrumentalities could be questioned; the public law remedy, however, cannot be invoked to establish the very right. So long as the respondent Grama Panchayat does not admit the title of the petitioner or any other person to the alleged private pathway, the issue continues to remain in the realm of a title dispute.

14. If we examine the statutory scheme, Section 2, the lexical provision, of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, defines the public road as follows: 

15. It is further relevant to examine Section 169 of the Act, which reads as follows: 

16. From the above statutory scheme, it is evident that 'public road' as defined under clause (xxxv) of Section 2 of the Act is quite expansive. Any street, road, square, court, alley, passage, cart-tract, foot-path or riding path, over which the public have a right of way, even if it is not a thoroughfare, is a public road. Further, Section 169 of the Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, begins with a non-obstante clause. The expression 'not being private property appertaining thereto' in Sub-section (1) of Section 169 is very significant. It only exempts private property adjacent to any public road, but not the very road, which always has an element of public utility attached to it—be it private or public. Further, the roads need not be thoroughfares. It is also pertinent to observe that clause (c) of sub-section (1) of Section 169, dealing with the village Panchayats, species 'other village roads, paths and lanes within the Village Panchayat area' as vesting in the Grama Panchayat. The expression used is 'village roads, paths and lanes'; it does not specify whether they are private or public.

17. Sweeping as the above observation may be, I hasten to draw a distinction between private property pure and simple and private property with an element of public character. Tom Bingham, in his book 'The Rule of Law' (P.75, Penguin, 2011), has observed thus: 

18. If a pathway is within the confines of a house, however sprawling it may be, whatever lies therein may be private in character and private in use. Once it is meant to connect somebody else's, thus becoming part of a network of roads or paths, however short or insignificant its extent and reach may be, it is to sub-serve the public purpose of providing access to and fro.

19. Since much emphasis has been laid on the Kerala Land Relinquishment Act, 1958, it is apposite to refer to the same as well. As the long cause title of the Act suggests, it is an act to make provision for the relinquishment of lands in the State of Kerala in favour of the Government. Section 2(a) of the Act defines the “registered holder” thus: 

20. Further, the very act of relinquishment is defined in clause (b) of Section 2 as follows: 

21. In the first place land ought to have been registered in the revenue records. The question of 'having registered in the revenue record' arises only in the case of agriculture lands. And the relinquishment ought to be in favour of the Government. In this regard, it pays to examine Section 3 of the Act, which reads thus: 

(emphasis added) 

22. As has been observed earlier, the long cause title declares that it is a relinquishment in favour of the Government; so does Section 3 of the Act, which is a substantive provision. It gets further fortified, if we examine Section 4C, which declares that once an application for relinquishment of any land is accepted in consequence of any order passed by the Revenue Divisional Officer under Section 4, or the Collector under Section 4A, or the Board of Revenue under Section 4B, such land together with all right, title and interest of the registered holder or, as the case may be, the cultivating tenant and the intermediaries, if any, in such land, shall vest in the Government free of all encumbrances. 

23. It is evident from the above statutory scheme that the Kerala Land Acquisition Act, 1958, essentially deals with agricultural lands. The whole mechanism provided therein is amply indicative of the fact that it does not have any application to residential properties. Further, it only governs any relinquishment in favour of the Government. The very act has not defined the expression 'Government'; even if we look at the provisions of the General Clauses Act, the lexical provision, Section 3(23), does not include a local self-government, such as the respondent Grama Panchayat, to be Government, though the provision is inclusive rather than definitive. The scheme of the enactment is, thus, amply indicative that it is a legislation meant to subserve the agrarian reforms.

24. Once a property assumes the character, say, a road or a path, having the potential of being a public utility, it ceases to have any exclusivity, for the individual interest is to yield to the common good. John Donne declares: No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. The legislative wisdom has ensured that there should not be private fiefdoms and zones of exclusivity shutting out access to the general public.

25. Viewed from another angle, it is axiomatic that if a piece of land is to be plotted out, it is statutorily mandatory that proper roads and other amenities are shown. Just because the whole of the property once was private, it could not be said that it would bear the same character forever. The logical fallacy is very evident if we examine the fact that, by the same token, if roads in a layout are to be treated as the private property of the purchasers, the other statutory lung spaces and spaces for public utility are also required to be treated as private properties. If every layout has only private roads barring access to the general public, we will end up with a series of private estates without a connecting thread of roads, forcing the people to jump and hop from place to place— ludicrous as it sounds.

26. I have also examined the Circular No.58608/ D.B.2/2009 LSGD, dated 13.01.2010, which deals with the rectification of mistakes in the Asset Register and inclusion of new assets in the said register. But I do not find anything adverse therein to conclude that the road in question should not be treated as one vesting in the respondent Panchayat. 

In the facts and circumstances, the writ petition is dismissed. All interim orders, if any, in force, stand vacated. No order as to costs. 

Dama Seshadri Naidu, Judge 

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