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02.01.2023

1. A common question of law arises in all these writ petitions and they are accordingly disposed of by this common judgment.

2. For the Petitioners in the present writ petitions, it is not the first time that they are litigating before this Court. In some cases, there have been at least two earlier rounds of litigation. The present batch of writ petitions has several common features. In all of them, the Petitioners are questioning the powers of the Assistant Settlement Officer (ASO), an authority functioning under the Orissa Survey and Settlement Act, 1958 (OSS Act), to purportedly exercise suo motu powers at the stage of a preliminary publication of a draft record of rights (ROR) under Section 12 of OSS Act and to pass orders directing that the lands in question be recorded in the name of the Government in the ROR.

4. On the basis of the above general direction issued by this Court in OJC No.9449 of 1993, orders came be passed in purported exercise of suo motu powers by ASOs at the stage of examining the applications for mutation of the names of the purchasers in the RORs. Many of these purchasers had purchased the land in question through registered sale deeds (RSDs) and were asking for consequential entry of their names in the ROR on the basis of such RSDs.

5. Pursuant to the directions issued by this Court in OJC No. 9449 of 1993, action was sought to be taken under the OGLS Act to cancel the leases. At that stage, writ petitions were filed in this Court in which orders were passed remanding the matters to the Additional District Magistrate (ADM) to examine, after hearing the Petitioners, whether in fact leases hadbeen granted validly in their favour. The Court is informed that in some of these cases, on such remand, the ADM again passed orders affirming the grant of lease in favour of the Petitioners or their vendors or the predecessors-in- interest. The grievance is that even in such cases where the ADM had confirmed the grant of leases in favour of the predecessors-in-

interest of the Petitioners, the ASOs at the stage of examining the request for mutation in the ROR, again exercised purported suo motu power to decline such registration of ROR and issued positive directions that they should in fact be recorded in the name of the Government. This has triggered the present round of litigation.

6. This Court has been shown numerous orders passed by both the learned Single Judge of this Court as well as various Division Benches where in similar circumstances, it has been repeatedly held that the ASOs exercising powers under the OSS Act are bound by the orders passed by the ADM under the OGLS Act and cannot possibly override such orders.

15. In some of the cases before us, such appeals were in fact filed and rejected by the Appellate Authority under Section 12-A of the OSS Act perhaps on the ground that in the meanwhile a final list had been published. However, the position is not very clear from the pleadings in these writ petitions. Therefore, two scenarios can possibly emerge i.e., one where there has been a final publication of the ROR in terms of Section 13 of the OSS Act read with Rule 29 of the OSS Rules and another where there has been no such final publication of the ROR. Nevertheless in both scenarios, a common feature, as already noticed, in all these writ petitions is that ASOs have passed orders declining the request of the Petitioners for recording their names in the ROR in respect of the land in question. It must be noted at this stage that in all these writ petitions while issuing notice, this Court had directed status quo to be maintained and that interim order has continued. In most of these writ petitions, no counter affidavits have been filed despite the petitions having been pending over 8 years now.