Telangana HC backs temple’s 77.30-acre land claim in Ranga Reddy

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has upheld the Revenue Department’s decision to issue an Occupancy Rights Certificate (ORC) in the name of Devla Balaji (Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple) for about 77.30 acres of land in Malkapur village, Chevella mandal, Ranga Reddy district, and dismissed a batch of petitions challenging that order.

What the court decided

A single bench of Justice NV Shravan Kumar, while hearing writ petitions filed by Seri Narayana Reddy and 21 others, upheld the ORC issued in 2003 by the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) of Chevella in favour of Devla Balaji temple and the subsequent proceedings by the Joint Collector confirming that order.

The court held that the RDO’s decision to grant the ORC under the Inam Abolition Act, based on the 1954–55 Khasra Pahani, was legally valid and that the High Court could not interfere with those executive orders.

The petitioners had challenged the ORC, arguing that the land was patta land held by their ancestors and not inam land, and that they had been cultivating it for generations. They also contended that the RDO had issued the ORC unilaterally in 2003, relying only on the 1973–74 pahani submitted by the MRO, without considering their objections, and that the Joint Collector later confirmed it without properly examining their objections.

Temple’s claim and revenue records

The Revenue and Endowments Departments argued that Chevella mandal has a large extent of temple inam land and that the petitioners were merely tenants (kouludars), not owners.

They pointed out that before 2003, the RDO had already conducted proceedings under the Inam Abolition Act and found that the land in question was inam land belonging to the Devla Balaji temple.
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The authorities also noted that in 1999, when the temple applied for an ORC, the petitioners had raised objections, but at that time they did not challenge the 1958 order of the erstwhile Hyderabad government’s Mutakab Office (which dealt with Nizam-era inam matters) that had already treated the land as temple inam. The court observed that the petitioners’ ancestors had not objected when the temple’s name was entered in the revenue records, and therefore they could not now question the temple’s rights over the same land.

Court’s reasoning

Justice Shravan Kumar noted that both parties – the temple and the petitioners – were claiming rights over the same 77.30 acres, and that the dispute was essentially about title and possession. Since the ORC proceedings dealt only with occupancy rights and not with title, the court held that the High Court could not adjudicate on the question of ownership at this stage.

The judge ruled that any dispute over title and rights to the land should be decided by the Endowments Tribunal under the Telangana Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, not by the High Court in a writ petition challenging the ORC.

Accordingly, the court declined to interfere with the RDO’s ORC and the Joint Collector’s confirming proceedings and dismissed the writ petitions.

Background of the land

The 77.30 acres in Malkapur, spread across several survey numbers, are valued at several crores of rupees and have been at the centre of a long-standing dispute between the Devla Balaji temple and local farmers.

In 2003, the Chevella RDO issued an ORC in the temple’s name, and in 2006, the Joint Collector confirmed that order, paving the way for the temple to treat the land as its own.

When the government later tried to auction this land on lease, the petitioners approached the Telangana High Court and obtained a stay, but the latest judgment effectively upholds the temple’s occupancy rights over the entire 77.30 acres, leaving the question of final ownership to be decided in the Endowments Tribunal.