Tenant Cannot Claim Adverse Possession Against Landlord: SC

It is certainly in the fitness of things that the Supreme Court in a most learned, laudable, landmark, logical and latest judgment titled Brij Narayan Shukla vs Sudesh Kumar Alias Suresh Kumar & Ors in Civil Appeal No. 7502 of 2012 and cited in Neutral Citation No.: 2024 INSC 9 that was pronounced as recently as on January 3, 2024 has set aside a judgment of Allahabad High Court that had allowed a suit for claiming rights by adverse possession and held that ownership and possession of land cannot be claimed through permissive possession arising from tenancy.

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Additionally, there was no possibility of asserting adverse possession in this context. The Apex Court thus affirmed the appellant’s ownership from the sale deed in 1966 and very rightly rejected the High Court’s reasoning. We thus see that the Apex Court very rightly allowed the appeal.

At the very outset, this remarkable, robust, rational and recent judgment authored by Hon’ble Mr Justice Vikram Nath for a Bench of Apex Court comprising of himself and Hon’ble Mr Justice Rajesh Bindal sets the ball in motion by first and foremost putting forth in para 1 that, “The plaintiff is in appeal assailing the correctness of the judgment and order dated 15.05.2012 passed by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court allowing Second Appeal No.202 of 1980, Sudesh Kumar and others vs. Brij Narayan Shukla and others, whereby, both the judgments of the First Appeal Court and the Trial Court were set aside and the suit of the plaintiff appellant was dismissed on the ground of limitation being barred by time.”