The Karnataka High Court last month highlighted the need for a regulatory framework and guidelines to deal with cases where converted lands that are not part of a sanctioned layout are acquired, saying “there is a pressing necessity for the State to devise a comprehensive scheme to regulate such transactions”. The observations were made in the context of a petition seeking the issuance of an e-khata—a digital version of a property document in Karnataka—for a particular site at Holalkere town in Chitradurga district. The order, passed on September 19 by a bench of Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum, was recently made public. In this case, the petitioner had bought the property in question with a sale deed from 2010, submitting that local authorities had issued a manual khata in 2015. However, the Holalkere Town Municipality had refused to issue an e-khata based on certain government circulars, including one that barred issuing an e-khata without a sanctioned layout. In 2024, the property owner approached the high court. The municipality had submitted before the court that it had to reject the e-khata application as per a 2017 government circular. According to the municipality, they had earlier sought directions to issue e-khatas by collecting a 10 per cent property value betterment charge, but a subsequent circular in 2018 from the urban development department had prohibited issuing e-khatas for plots without layout plan approvals. The court rejected the petition for the e-khata, explaining, “In the present case, the admitted position is that no sanctioned layout plan has been submitted to or approved by the competent planning authority...the records disclose that the local authority, noticing the existence of such sites carved out of converted lands without sanction, had sought permission from the state government to collect betterment charges as a condition for regularisation. The said request was turned down...”. The court, however, observed that the matter needed to be dealt with at the policy level, since there was an increase in purchasers acquiring converted land sites which were not part of any sanctioned layout. The bench added, “.there is a pressing necessity for the State to devise a comprehensive scheme to regulate such transactions. Unless and until the State formulates appropriate guidelines or a regularisation mechanism..courts cannot, in individual cases, bypass the statutory mandate and issue directions contrary to law.”
