Land fragmentation order challenged in Aurangabad bench

Aurangabad, Feb 16:

Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court comprising Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice S.G. Dighe, ordered to issue notices to the state government and the respondents and to fill their response within four weeks, upon the hearing of the petition challenging the order to prohibit fragmentation of landholdings in the state.

Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps, Maharashtra State, Pune has issued a circular on July 12, 2021, which states that pursuant to the law prohibiting fragmentation of landholdings in Maharashtra, all District Sub-Registrars have been directed to refuse registration of sale deeds which are not accompanied with sanctioned layout approved by the District Magistrate.

Petitioners Govind Ramling Solpure, Prakash Gadgul, and Krushna Raosaheb Pawar have approached the Aurangabad Bench and submitted a writ petition against the Government of Maharashtra, Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps, Maharashtra State, and Sub-Registrar Aurangabad.

The petitioners are engaged in the business of plotting and real estate and for the sake of registration of sale deeds of the plots and row-houses sold to their customers, they have tried to register the documents after the payment of necessary stamp duty by approaching the offices of District Sub-Registrars in Aurangabad. However, the sale deeds have been returned unregistered by all the Sub-Registrars owing to the government order.

During the hearing on the petition on Monday, the bench ordered to issue notices to the concerned authorities and directed them to fill their responses within four weeks. Adv Rameshwar Totala, Adv Rahul Totala and Adv Riya Jariwala appeared for the petitioners. The next hearing will be conducted after 4 weeks.