[DISCLAIMER - Let us have the disclaimer first.
The author is not a law graduate – not even a basic LLB. This is not to be
construed as legal advice – for that, please consult your family lawyer, or a
specialist. I repeat, this is not to be taken as legal advice, and it is being
italicized to avoid tortuous liability. That being taken care of, all that can
be said that the author has the experience of deciding 2500 plus Revenue Cases
in his one and a half year tenure at Court. It was the anguish of seeing well
meaning people lose their lands due to legal issues in their deals, that
inspired this article. It is also inspired by a quote from one of the
instructors in LBSNAA (the IAS Academy) – that the only way to be sure of your
land title in India is to get it declared by a Constitution Bench of the Hon.
Supreme Court! My effort is to try and see if a sure title is possible without
disturbing the Apex Court. Again, this article is meant to be advisory in
nature, and it is intended to be edited based on suggested corrections and
improvements. So I request persons in the know how of Revenue matters – senior
officers of the IAS, and the UP PCS, lawyers, Judicial Officers, and those who
have litigated on land matters, to please help improve the article.]
Financial management is one area in which most
indian middle class households are a bit unsure. Well, to begin with, most of
the 'middle class' used to comprise of pensioned government jobs, and hence,
technically, unless one actually had a plan beyond the mundane for the post
retirement life, there was no need for financial planning as long as one's
expenses were being met by the income. However, with most of the current
generation taking up jobs in the private sector, and even the post 2004
entrants to the government services taking up employment under the New Pension
System (or as we lovingly call it, the No Pension System!), the need to build a
life-scale financial plan is very important now. The markets, and the faith in
the markets (both are quite close looped feedback system) are yet to reach a
level of reliability. Thus, real estate - primarily, land becomes a preferred
avenue of investment. This, as the title suggests, is not an article about
investments. It is about a primary introduction to the land laws, and a series
of cautionary tales and advice on how not to burn your hard earned money.
Picturizing the Presumptive Title
Imagine a vast, sea like pool, with murky
water. Imagine gigantic tables, made of wood, therein. From the surface, you
just see the table tops – not the legs thereof. On these tables stand people,
going about their business. Unbeknownst to them, some of these tables are
standing on other tables, submerged. Some firmly, some precariously so. Some
are simply floating adrift. The tables are too huge for the dwellers thereupon
to tell which is which, except for those with a very keen vestibular sense, and
those who dove under the surface to know the truth. The submerged tables sit
atop supporting tables of their own, submerged even deeper – and this goes on
till the bed of the pool is there. I know this is a bit odd to imagine, but
bear with me.
The current land titling system in most of
India is similar. Our sale deeds, our name in the revenue records, our happy
existence in our happy homes, is just our act of dwelling on the surface level
table tops. As long as the water is there, it really does not matter if it is
floating, perched precariously or standing solid. It is presumed that we all
are stable. This is the crux of presumptive titling. Presumptive title draws
from a chain of transfers and transactions from earlier title holders. This is
signified by the submerged tables. The pool bed is the original settlement of
land done in the last survey and settlement operations – most probably in the
colonial era.
So, imagine there is an even more gigantic
suction pump attached to the pool bed, which can, in a trice, suck out all the
water from the pool. What happens now? As you guessed it, those tables that
stand on a series of firmly placed tables shall remain as they were. Those
which were floating, either of their own, or standing on a floater, would go
quite crashing down. Those perched precariously, or on weak legged tables
anywhere in the series, would teeter, to varying extents. This, in the real
world, is the presumption in our presumptive title being tested in a court of
law.
So, what inferences can be drawn upon by these
analogies. First, and a very simple, take away is – it is always worth the
effort to check under water before getting atop a table. Better avoid the
creakers, and the floaters. Second, deeper take away is this. A chain is as
strong as its weakest link, and a stack of table is as strong as the weakest
table leg. So assume that the probability of a random table having a creaky
leg, or perching precariously, is P. So, the probability of it not being creaky
or “perchy” is (1-P). Suppose there are two tables. The probability of the
whole stack being non-creaky, is the probability of both tables being non
creaky – that is, table A being non-creaky, AND table B being non creaky. As
students of mathematics would know, “AND” probabilities are multiplicative, and
hence, the combined probability is (1-P) x (1-P). If a stack has three tables,
the probability of non creaky stack is (1-P)x(1-P)x(1-P). For a stack of n
tables, it is (1-P)^n. As can be seen, (1-P) is a quantity less than 1, and
hence, as the exponential power increases, the probability figure keeps going
down – the chances of the stack being creaky increases. In the real world, the
longer is the chain of title holders from the settlement in your presumptive
title, the more is the chance that it may be defective. One need not go into
the mathematics of it at all – most readers would agree that it is their
inherent gut feeling too.
Land Records System
So, now that we agree on the need to check
‘under the hood’, let us get familiar with what we are looking for. This is an
introduction to the Land Record system, in Uttar Pradesh. However, most states
which were under the Mughal and then the British rule in their history, would
have a similar system.
At the topmost present level, there are the
record of rights (khatauni), field map (shajra) and field book (khasra
girdawari, or khasra). Khatauni is a record of titleholders in alphabetical
order. The titleholders are recorded, individually, or in case of shared
holdings, jointly. It is prepared for 6 years. Next to the name are recorded
the plot numbers under the named ownership, their areas, the year in which the
rights were generated. In the last column, the orders which affect the other
entries, are recorded temporarily, till the 6 year period elapses and the
changes so ordered are effected in the main columns. It is, legally, a fiscal
record, which shows who is liable to pay the land revenue on the said land
parcels. It is also a tenuous proof of title in the land. The shajra is simply
a map, drawn to a scale of 1mm = 4m. It shows all the plots in the area, and
other notable installations and features of a village. The plots are numbered.
The khasra is simply a record of these numbered plots serially. It includes the
names of the person tilling the land (or the tenure holder whose name is in the
khatauni), details of the means of irrigation, and the details of the crop sown
in the three seasons of kharif, rabi and zaid. It is an annual record. It is
also a (very very tenuous) proof of occupation of the land.
The khasra entries change every year based on
what is sown or built on the land parcel, and on the basis of the records in
khatauni. The shajra is quite stable. It is sometimes altered on court orders
in Suits related to map correction. However, the most dynamic record as far as
we are concerned, is the khatauni. The
record of ownership is being continually changed based on the orders of various
Courts. These orders of the courts, before they effect a change in the main
entry, reside as remark entries in the last column of the khatauni, till the 6
year period on that khatauni is exhausted. Before residing in the last column,
the order is entered in the Mutation register (R6), on the basis of a Warrant
(parwana) of the Court ordering the change in the land record – the warrant
itself being pasted in a guard file, forming a permanent archive. The warrant
itself is originated from a Court file. Thus, going behind the current instant
records, there are these few records that trace the history of owner ship on
any land parcel – the series of old khataunis – for every six years. In these
khataunis, the khata number would change every time, based on the inclusion and
exclusion of khaatedaars (account holders / land holders), since the
positioning is purely alphabetical. However, the gata number (plot number ) in
front of the account holders name should be invariant in a true case. Whenever
there is a change, then the previous khatauni should reflect a court order in
its last column. The court order should also exist on the R6 (mutation
register), and the corresponding warrant should exist on the warrant guard
files. The said warrant should also exist on the concerned court files.
If you think this is getting confusing, you are
in for more. For the invariance of the account holder name and the plot number
exists only till Chakbandi or Consolidation operations take place. A brief
introduction to consolidation is warranted. Consolidation is one of a series of
land reforms brought about post independence to improve the agriculture
situation in a primarily agrarian state. Succession to lands, along with sales
and purchases, lead, over time, to fragmentation of land holdings. The same
person can hold a number of small scattered plots. Needless to say, small plots
cannot take advantage of modern methods. Plus a lot of land area is lost in the
bunds, pathways and similar accoutrements. So fragmentation is definitely bad.
Consolidation is an operation in which all the accountholders of the
consolidated area (usually a revenue village) pool together their fragmented land,
which is then redemarcated into large, viable plots, and distributed among the
account holders as per their original share – the share being ‘moderated’ for
the change in quality of land. The more discerning of the readers would acknowledge
how much bite is there in the ‘moderation’ – there is a famous saying – the villages
in which consolidators have gone once, even the dacoits avoid for 20 years! Let
us leave aside the various troubles with the consolidation itself, and assume
that a very successful consolidation exercise has been completed. What that
does to our land records system is that the plots are now totally different,
and renumbered. The relationship between the old plots and the new is shown in
what is known as CH-41 – which is a khasra with two plot numbers – old and new.
The ‘confirm sheet’ is a bi-color map, mapping the old plot boundaries in a color
different from the new ones. The relationship between the old rights and the
new one is more tenuous, and it goes through a series of entries, for which a
good reading of the Consolidation of Holdings Act and Rules is required. In
brief, the rights are entered in Form 2A, Form 10A, Form 23, and in the end, in
the form CH-45, which is the new khatauni after the consolidation is over. The
CH-45 contains the reference of the original 10A entries in its last remarks
column, so that can be thought of as a link between old rights and new. Of
course, consolidation exercises last a few years, and all the normal revenue
transactions like sale and purchases, and their mutations occur in the
consolidation records, just the way they do in the normal revenue records.
I know it has been very confusing by now –
current records, historical records, and now this twisting and turning of
consolidation. However, we have dealt only with the complete set of revenue
records till now. (Yeah, there are no revenue records left after this coverage –
if that is a consolation!) However, as I have told before too, revenue records
are accorded just a presumptive status. So they are not the only documents with
which titles can be proved. Not all buyers apply for mutation of their names
into the khatauni. In fact most small purchasers do not. It has its origins in
the rather draconian section 168A of the UPZALR Act – which prohibited the sale
of small fragments of lands (aimed at the same good as the consolidation
process does), and led to vesting of any such purchases into the State. So
small residential size plot purchasers chose not to inform the revenue
authorities of such purchases. Many other purchasers did not get their names
mutated – for example, if the land was partially constructed upon. In the eyes
of law, if the sellers held a valid title, then these deed-holder-not-mutated
purchasers are the rightful title owners, their mutation status
notwithstanding. Thus, in addition to the revenue records, one needs to study
all the registered deeds that have been executed in the said lands.
How to Use these Records
Now that we have become familiar with the
records (for those who have not become familiar yet, do revise the above sub
part again, for what comes is in fact a travelling review of the same system)
we can now address the issue of how to research the land we are about to buy.
First of all, take a copy of the current
khatauni. It is available for a fee of Rs.15 at all Tehsil offices, and can be
applied for online too. See if it bears the name of your seller – if not in the
main column, then in the orders column. If the name is in the main column, make
sure no orders overturning that are in the orders column.
Then take out all the khataunis prior to that,
till you hit the bed rock of survey and settlement records. In this exercise,
you might cross consolidation exercises. In such cases, match the khatauni just
next to the consolidation with the consolidation CH-45. From the remarks column
of CH-45, trace if it matches with the 10A entry. From the 10A entry, you can
easily navigate to the old khasra numbers of the titleholders. (This assumes that
the land wasn’t bought or sold in the consolidation pendency – that complicates
the process – and has to be dealt with the way sales and purchases are to be dealt
in normal course, as will be explained shortly.) So, this way you cross the
consolidation and continue to navigate prior khataunis on an older plot number
on which the holders’ rights existed. In the said process, you shall definitely
cross the process of Zamindari abolition. From there, another land record,
named as Khewat would join the party. (The modern khatauni is an amalgamation
of the old Khewat and Khatauni. The Khewat used to be record of rights in the
Zamindari era – it contained the names of the owners and their sub tenants of
various degrees – the details are not important here. What is important to know
that it did not contain the plot / khasra numbers on which the khewatdaar had
rights! Yes! It just had the Khewat number. The old Khasra had a column for
Khewat number, and all the khasra entries (plots) that bore a particular Khewat
number were under the title of that khewatdaar. So to prove that you are the
title holder of a khasra number, you need an extract of the khewat, which shows
your name, and then the khasra entry, which bears the khewat number. That was
easy. However, to ascertain the total holding of a khewatdaar, you needed to
have the whole khasra book, and pick out all the entries bearing the given
khewat number – quite a messy prospective. I had to get it done once, a whole
different story!) If you have just been bamboozled by the contents of that
bracket, or have simply chosen to skip it, there is some partial respite. At
the date UP Zamindari Abolition became operation – the date of vesting, the records
of the time became sort of baselines. The khasra and khatauni of the Agricultural
Year 1359 are very important. They are used to establish if any modern plot is
a part of old ponds or lands of public purpose on which no permanent rights
could accrue. They are used to certify caste. They are the baseline documents
for most sort of litigations, and if you have researched back till 1359 AY, you
are on pretty solid grounds. However, sadly, it is not a very strong baseline,
and litigation in titles is still allowed to go behind the Zamindari Abolition,
into the Zamindari era. So, it is call one must make – brevity and convenience
vs accuracy and being foolproof.
That was about following a strand of ownership
to the settlement bedrock. Of course, no strand could be expected to be that
long – unless we have a Bicentennial man alive amongst us. For the lands would
have been bought and sold in the decades that pass, and of course, land holders
would die, leaving the land to their successors – natural or testamentary. Both
transfers and successions would lead to a mutation order being recorded in the
orders column of the khatauni (or the khewat), which would get transferred in
the main column of the khatauni (khewat) when the 6 years (4 Years) period of
the said document expires. Of course, since we are looking at it backwards, we
would see names of our sellers get out of the main column into the orders
column, where it would be mentioned how he happened to get that land by
purchase / succession from whom. Then going further back, the eponymous ‘whom’
of the last sentence would get their place in the main column, and so we will
continue backwards, till even these names get preceded by their predecessors
and so on. Now, for all these mutations, there would be entries in the Mutation
register. A copy of the same, brought out by a simple RTI application, would
verify the authenticity of the same. Uncontested successions do not need court
orders – they may be done by the Supervisor Kanoongo (Revenue Inspector)
himself. So, to be double sure, get a copy of the Family Register of the said
family in the year prior to the mutation, to check if all the valid successors
had been mutated. If any names have been left out unexplicably, it is red flag.
For all other types of mutation, the Mutation Register would be preceded by a
Warrant in the Warrant Guard file, and before that, in the court file in which
the warrant originated. All of these can be had for a fee. Tiresome exercise –
yes.
After that, the things get a little more
tiresome still. Now you must go to the local Sub Registrar office, and apply
for the ‘Monthly Index’ of the documents registered in the said revenue
village, or in the said plot number of the said village – going back to the
consolidation! You have to do this under the RTI. As an officer, if I were
there receiving such a request, I would reply that the record is too cumbersome
to process, and that you are free to inspect the records. Just inspect them. As
patient as you can be. Take an Urdu reader with you, for somewhere around 1950s
the records shall change into Persian script. What you are looking for is – any
occurrence of the plot number (or its pre consolidation “rights equivalent”),
and any of the title holders on the said lands that you encountered on your
traverse back in the time to the settlement. Some of them would be expected –
if the title of your seller has been derived from a previous sale, that sale
deed would be found in there. However, you are looking for registered items
which are not a part of the mutations in your traverse. If and when such items
occur, note the numbers of the registered documents, and take out a copy of the
same.
So now that we have seen the whole canvas of
how the land ownership is reflected across the ages in the revenue records, as
well as the gamut of registered documents that might affect the title, what
exactly do we need to look into when purchasing the land.
First of all, as I said earlier, the lower the
number of links in the chain, the better it is. Look for a family held land.
That too with only natural succession – testamentary successions by wills can
be very problematic, and it is better if they are avoided. If resold land has
to be bought, the least number of sales links is the better. Even in
successions, the least number of successions is the best.
Then there are sale related issues. Till the
operation of the UPRC 2006 started on February 11, 2016, the khatauni recorded
all the cotenure holders against a plot, without expressing the area share of
each of these shareholders. It is inadvisable to buy a cotenancy land. Better
to ask your seller to get his land partitioned out under UPRC Section 116
(UPZALR 176), and get your shares and sub plot clearly demarcated out. Ensure
that the summons are served on all the recorded tenureholders, so that no one
can claim ex-parte judgement later. This has three benefits. Firstly, a suit
prior to sale might bring out hidden disputes, before you burn your hands in
the deal. Secondly, most land dispute are born out of cotenancy, when some of
the parties try to claim meatier part of the undivided land – meatiness depends
on productivity, proximity to resources or roads etc. A prepartitioned plot
avoids such issues. The third, and the most important thing, however, is the
declaration of clear shares and boundaries. This needs to be elaborated in a
paragraph of its own.
I, in my capacity as a presiding officer of Revenue
Court, have seen unscrupulous people selling unsuspecting buyers more than what
their share is in the said cotenancy! Since the khatauni had no shares
expressed, and the buyer was gullible, a person with, say, a 2000 square metres
right in a plot of one hectare, might straightaway sell a 3000 square metre
share to him. Even if the buyer is smart, and insists on researching his seller’s
share, he can always sell him 1500 square metres, and then, immediately sell,
say, 1200 metres to another buyer. Thus, he has achieved a sale of 2700 square
metres on a right of 2000 square metres. This is where the sale deeds – mutated
or not, that you have extricated from the Sub Registrar, would come handy. See to
it that all the sale deeds record only the shares that were actually available
to the sellers, and no ‘over-sales’ of the kind mentioned above have been done.
Then again, some sale deeds have special qualifiers that demarcate the direction
and location of the land sold from a larger plot. A single tenureholder in possession
of the plot has the right to do so. A cotenant holding a plot under cotenancy
does not have such a right. Some times the original owner of the large plot
sells the buyers small demarcated shares, and leave out pathways between them
as unsold commons. Often the unscrupulous out of these buyers try to get hold
of these pathways and merge them in their shares. Since such pathways are not
public pathways as per definition, no quick remedy is available in such a case.
A partition suit would bring out all such private settlements into the public
record as well as on the revenue map. Hence, on the pain of repetition, always
buy a partitioned out share.
So, to revise, we have traversed the ownership of
our seller in the said land, through his own predecessors or previous sellers; we
have successfully crossed over areas of consolidation – through the “rights equivalency
CH-45 – CH-10A route” (and not the plot equivalency route through CH 41); and in
the Zamindari era we have also seen the associated Khewat. For every mutation ,
we have checked the R6 and the associated warrants and Court files (as
applicable). We have noted down all the title holders and their cotenure
holders in these records, and we have scoured the Monthly Index of the said
Revenue Village from the Registry Office - for the plot number, for its “rights
equivalent” pre-consolidation and for the names of the above mentioned title
holders and their contenants. Wherever these things occurred in the index, we
have taken out the registered documents, and checked them for mischiefs like ‘over-sale’,
‘direction and location demarcated sales’ and ‘sales with paths’. Then we have
asked the seller to get his land share partitioned out. So now we are good to
buy into the said land. So we buy it.
Possession
Good job. Now we have completed just one of the
two major legs on which the presumptive title rests – a solid legal title.
However, the second leg is as important, if not more. It is the actual physical
possession of the said land. For one thing, mutation requires possession –
mutation cases can be dismissed if, in most cases, the non possession is
proved. Secondly, in the absence of very clear ground markers, leaving your purchased
land undemarcated can keep it vulnerable to even inadvertent ‘honest mistake’
type encroachment, as well as to the mala fide land grabbers. Wait a minute, a
part of the occupation goes into the research part too. From an occupation
point of view, what land is the best to buy? To answer this, I would let you in
on a dirty little secret. Almost none of the current plots are at their exact
prescribed locations. Almost everything is shifted a little bit – the fields,
their boundary bunds, the pathways between them, the crossroads made by the
crossing of these pathway (the last ones are one type of the ‘permanent’ fixed
points used to solve measurement disputes). This issue comes to fore more
starkly at village boundaries – if the boundaries of the two maps do not
coincide. Remember, one milimetre on the map is 4 metres on the ground. Hence, it
is always better to buy lands – a) near some permanent markers – like old
wells, old roads, any old structure recorded in the survey/consolidation map,
b) away from the village boundaries. To do that, you need a copy of the village
map. RTI – once again, comes to our rescue.
Government Lands
Once the steps regarding research and possession
enumerated above are complied with, you have managed to avoid the repercussions
of the shenanigans of the private parties. You, however, still need to be aware
of the shenanigans of the state! There are just a few now. One you have already
been exposed to – the draconian 168 A ZALR – which prohibited sales of
fragments. In case, along your traverse, you find sales of fragments, which
have not been subsequently regularized, avoid it. Or ask the seller to get it
regularized – it is allowed now, after repeal of the section. Next is the
fallout of Hinchlal Tiwari Judgement – any traditional pond has to remain a
pond. It has to be redug if it has been built upon. That is what the law says.
How to find if your prospective land is infact a hidden pond (or any other land
of public purpose)? Just check out the khasra of the 1359 AY, referred to earlier.
Another set of laws prohibited unregulated sale of land by the weaker sections
of the society. These are section 157A and 157AA of the UPZALR Act and the
Section 99 of the UPRC. So if the land in question has ever been in the
possession of SC / ST landholders, it needs to be checked if the proper
permissions were taken when these lands were sold. How to spot such
tenureholders? Firstly, the records of 1359 AY and before contain the caste of
the landholders. Thereafter, any landholder who has been let on the gram sabha
land on the basis of lease by the Panchayat Land Management Committee or the
SDO usually falls under such category. Finally there is the issue of lands in
which the government has been a litigant. This includes a) lands with contested
rights accrued by unauthorized occupation by a member of the vulnerable section,
b) lands which have been exchanged with the gram sabha, c) lands in which
government had gained rights by vesting, sealing etc, which was later taken
away by a court judgement. In almost all such cases, somewhere somehow,
government keeps contesting for its rights, and occasionally wins, leaving a
bona fide purchaser high and dry for no fault of his. Activists (blackmailers)
of all stripes keep sniffing out for such lands, and then proceed to blackmail
the purchasers of such lands. In case the purchaser does not comply, they
complain to the authorities, quite self-righteously, and the authorities often
err on the side of caution with a huge margin, just to avoid blame.
To Conclude
I guess that to many of my readers, this reads
less like a DIY article and more like a satire. Well, to be honest, it is
partly that. It is very difficult for a small lower middle class land buyer to
do so much research. The article just specifies how much research needs to be
done. The purchaser may very well follow it to the extent he is willing,
trading off between surety and convenience. Almost all the current purchasers
of the land are doing so without even doing the first step, and are, for the
most part, doing well. Maybe my view is jaundiced by the extreme cases of human
crookedness and tragedy that come to the Court of a Sub Divisional Officer. The
satire lies in the fact that such a cumbersome process needs to be resorted to
be sure of one’s title in the land. Should that not be our right – to be sure
that the land we are buying would not one day be snatched from us, just the way
we are when we buy a vehicle or a consumer durable. Conclusive Titling is the
only way to get there. It shall come in its own time. First of all, there is
the need to raise the status of the revenue records from mere fiscal entries to
record of titles in the real sense. It can go further and record the appurtenant
buildings, and the owners thereof. Then the process of registry needs to be
linked electronically to the revenue records. If the name of the seller is not
there in the revenue records, the registry computer should not register a sale
by him. It shall force all such floating title holders to get themselves
mutated in the records – thus creating a true record of ownership. Secondly, it
helps avoid sales by non owners. Thus limiting disputes. That is the only way
to circumvent this 5000 words article. That is the only way to peace and
progress.
PS –
1.
One
issue that the original article missed was the issue of forced dispossession.
Middle class bona fide land owners are much troubled by muscled parties forcibly
occupying their property. Civil Courts have their own pendency issues to deal
with, and justice is time taking. Most go to the Police – who are almost as
clueless as what exactly to do in such cases. The speedy remedy is available
only under Section 145 CrPC – under which the police can help you. The section
allows an Executive Magistrate to deliver possession to the rightful possession
holder (which need not be the rightful title owner – the magistrate cannot
decide the title – only a civil / revenue court can do so). It even allows him
to deliver possession to the displaced party in case a forcible dispossession
in the last 2 months is proved.
Now question comes how to prove your
possession. For the magistrate has two options – to give possession to some
party, or to attach the property to a receiver under Section 146. Attachment
can be resorted to in cases of – a)imminent threat of breach of peace if the
land is left in either party’s possession, b) it becomes clear that none of the
party was originally in possession, c) it does not become clear which party was
in possession. Usually, it is the third case. There is no CCTV camera hovering
over all properties that can record possession. It is usually the word of one
party against other. So most cases lead to attachment until a competent civil
court decided on the issue. That leads back to the square one. I, in my tenure
as a Magistrate, gave out only one possession. The evidence was quite rock
solid. The awarded party had names in the consecutive voter lists (a public document)
between the names of parties which dwelt in the adjacent homes – both ECI and
SEC lists. They had a number of registered letters delivered to them at the
said address – utility bills and the like. The other party had plain words. The
weight of clear cut evidence was much appreciated. So if my readers want to
ensure that their possession creates a trail of reliable records, keep
collecting and archiving all the official papers you receive at your address,
and ensure your names in the electoral rolls occur at the correct house number.
Another way is to take photographs or videos of your ‘possession’ – say you
tilling your fields, or sitting on your front porch, with a copy of the day’s
newspaper in your hands, and mailing the photographs and videos to some
official email id – the photograph of the day’s newspaper proves that the photo
/ video cannot be older than the date the paper was published – and the time
stamp on your email proves it is not later than the dispatch of the mail. This
is the way I suggested my litigants to prove their possession! It is fool
proof. It does sound paranoid. Better be paranoid rather than dispossessed.
