Categories of Tenants — Bhumiswami, Bhumidhar, Government Lessee

The Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code, 1959 (a continuation of the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1959) collapsed the bewildering tangle of pre-merger tenures into a deliberately simple scheme. Section 157 declares that there shall be only one class of tenure-holders of land held from the State — the Bhumiswami — while a person holding land from the State who is not entitled to hold it as a Bhumiswami is a Government lessee under Section 181. The older intermediate class of Bhumidhar (and Bhumidhari rights) was merged upward into Bhumiswami status. This article maps the three categories, the bundle of rights and restrictions attaching to each, and the leading judgments that fix their character.

The single-tenure scheme: Section 157

Before 1959 the territory now forming Chhattisgarh was a patchwork of merged units — Mahakoshal, Madhya Bharat, Bhopal, Vindhya Pradesh and the Sironj region — each carrying its own revenue and tenancy law and its own ladder of malguzars, occupancy tenants, pakka tenants, muafidars and inamdars. Section 157 of the Code cuts through this by declaring that "there shall be only one class of tenure-holders of lands held from the State to be known as Bhumiswami." The provision is the structural keystone of the tenure chapter (Chapter XII): everything below it assumes a single proprietary tenure. The drafting intent was deliberate consolidation — to abolish intermediaries and place the cultivator in a near-proprietary relationship directly with the State. For the foundational framework see the introduction to the Code and the working definitions in land, holder, tenant and Bhumiswami.

Who is a Bhumiswami: Section 158

Section 158 is the conversion provision. It declares that every person who, at the commencement of the Code, belonged to specified pre-existing classes shall be called a Bhumiswami and shall have all the rights and be subject to all the liabilities conferred or imposed on a Bhumiswami by or under the Code. The enumerated feeder-classes are: (a) holders in the Mahakoshal region holding in Bhumiswami or Bhumidhari rights under the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1954; (b) pakka tenants, muafidars, inamdars or concessional holders in the Madhya Bharat region under the Madhya Bharat Land Revenue and Tenancy Act, Samvat 2007; (c) occupants in the Bhopal region under the Bhopal State Land Revenue Act, 1932; (d) certain tenants (including gair haqdar and entitled tenants) in the Vindhya Pradesh region; and (e) khatedar tenants and grove-holders in the Sironj region. The effect is uniform: heterogeneous pre-merger holders are folded into a single statutory status. Later amendments (notably the 1992 amendment) further provide that persons holding land in Bhumiswami right by virtue of a State, Collector or Allotment Officer lease, and persons allotted land in Bhumiswami right, are deemed Bhumiswamis — subject to a transfer embargo on allotted land.

The Bhumiswami's bundle of rights and the revenue liability (Section 159)

The Bhumiswami enjoys the fullest tenure the Code recognises: a heritable and transferable interest in the land, the right to its exclusive use and occupation, the right to make improvements, and protection against arbitrary dispossession. The principal recurring liability is land revenue. Section 159 fixes that a Bhumiswami is liable to pay as land revenue the same amount of land revenue (or rent treated as land revenue) that he was paying immediately before he became a Bhumiswami, until that assessment is revised under the survey and settlement machinery. The quantum and revision of revenue are products of the survey and settlement process, while the Bhumiswami's name and shares are carried in the record of rights. Because the interest is proprietary rather than precarious, the holding devolves on the holder's heirs and can be partitioned among co-holders by the Tahsildar under Section 178. The Bhumiswami also enjoys ancillary entitlements that flesh out the proprietary character: the right to make improvements for better cultivation or convenient enjoyment (the improvement provisions of the chapter), the right to the trees, wells and other attachments standing on the holding subject to the Code, and the right to use the land for any purpose consistent with the Code and the conditions of any grant. These positive rights are the mirror-image of the strictly limited grounds on which a Bhumiswami may be dispossessed — unlike a Government lessee, a Bhumiswami is not ejectable on the simple footing of a contractual default, and a Bhumiswami improperly dispossessed has a statutory remedy to be reinstated. The contrast in remedy and security is what most clearly separates the apex tenure from the residual lessee.

Bhumiswami as near-owner: the proprietary character

The judicial characterisation of the Bhumiswami as something close to a proprietor — not a mere tenant — is settled. In Mahadeo v. State of Bombay, AIR 1961 SC 1517, the Supreme Court, dealing with the antecedent tenures that fed into the 1959 Code, treated the holder's interest as proprietary in substance rather than a precarious tenancy. That characterisation matters across the Code: it explains why the Bhumiswami's interest is freely heritable and (subject to statutory curbs) transferable, why it attracts succession under general personal law rather than special tenancy-devolution rules, and why ejectment is tightly circumscribed. The label "tenant" in the Code's general definitions must therefore be read with care — a Bhumiswami is the antithesis of a tenant-at-will, and the word "tenure-holder" in Chapter XII is closer to "owner subject to payment of revenue to the State."

Restrictions on transfer: Section 165 and tribal land

Although transferable, the Bhumiswami's right of alienation is heavily regulated by Section 165. A mortgage cannot be so structured as to leave the Bhumiswami with less than the prescribed minimum (broadly, five acres irrigated or ten acres unirrigated), usufructuary mortgages are time-bound, and transfers in breach of prescribed ceiling and form requirements are vulnerable. The most consequential curb is the protection of aboriginal tribe Bhumiswamis: Section 165(6) bars the transfer of the bhumiswami right of a member of an aboriginal tribe to a non-tribal without the Collector's prior sanction (and in notified, predominantly tribal areas the bar is absolute against transfer by sale or as the consequence of a loan). The companion provision, Section 170-B, mandates reversion of tribal land transferred by fraud. In Bhaiji v. Sub-Divisional Officer, Thandla, (2003) 1 SCC 692, the Supreme Court held that Section 170-B is not confined to tribal-to-non-tribal transfers and contains no exception carving out inter se transfers between members of an aboriginal tribe — the protective net is cast widely. A transfer made in contravention of Section 165 is liable to be avoided under Section 170.

Leasing by a Bhumiswami and the occupancy tenant (Sections 168–169)

A Bhumiswami may grant leases of agricultural land within statutory limits. Section 168 permits leasing for a limited period at a time, and the lessee holds on the agreed terms; importantly, the leasing restriction is relaxed for protected categories of Bhumiswami — a widow, an unmarried woman, and persons suffering from social, physical or mental disability — who may lease without the ordinary time-bar under Section 168(2). The discipline lies in Section 169: an unauthorised lease can ripen into the accrual of rights of an occupancy tenant in favour of the lessee, with the further statutory consequence (via Sections 189 and 190) that an occupancy tenant may in defined circumstances be conferred Bhumiswami rights. The occupancy tenant is therefore not a free-standing category of tenure-holder under Section 157, but a transitional protected status that the Code uses to penalise improper leasing and to elevate long-protected cultivators. Mutation of any resulting interest is processed under the mutation of land records procedure.

Bhumidhar: the abolished middle tenure

Aspirants frequently ask where the Bhumidhar sits in the Chhattisgarh scheme, because the syllabus pairs the term with Bhumiswami. The short answer is that Bhumidhar is a historical tenure that the 1959 Code abolished as a separate class. Under the earlier Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1954, the Mahakoshal region recognised both Bhumiswami and Bhumidhar (Bhumidhari) rights, the Bhumidhar being a holder with a somewhat lesser bundle of rights than the full Bhumiswami. When the 1959 Code came into force, Section 158(a) expressly converted Mahakoshal holders "in Bhumiswami or Bhumidhari rights" into the single Bhumiswami class. The Bhumidhar thus survives in Chhattisgarh only as an antecedent category that feeds Section 158 — there is no continuing class of Bhumidhar tenure-holders under the present Code. (The term retains independent, live significance in other States, notably under the Uttar Pradesh tenure laws, which is a separate framework and must not be conflated with the Chhattisgarh position.)

Government Lessee: Section 181

The second living category of holder-from-the-State is the Government lessee, defined in Section 181. Every person who holds land from the State Government, or to whom a right to occupy land is granted by the State Government or the Collector, and who is not entitled to hold that land as a Bhumiswami, is a Government lessee in respect of that land. The category is residual and contractual rather than proprietary: it captures grantees and occupiers whose entitlement falls short of full tenure. Persons who, under the various pre-merger laws, held merely as ordinary tenants, special tenants or gair-khatedar tenants of the State — and who were not absorbed into the Bhumiswami class by Section 158 — fall here. The distinction is therefore status-defining: Section 158 routes the substantial holders into Bhumiswami, and Section 181 sweeps up the rest who hold directly from the State.

Rights and liabilities of a Government Lessee: Section 182

Section 182 fixes the legal character of the Government lessee's holding. Subject to any express provision of the Code, the Government lessee holds his land "in accordance with the terms and conditions of the grant," and crucially that grant is deemed to be a grant within the meaning of the Government Grants Act, 1895. The reference to the 1895 Act is decisive: it means the relationship is governed by the contractual terms of the grant rather than by the general protective tenancy law, so the ordinary statutory incidents that shield a Bhumiswami do not automatically apply to a Government lessee. Section 182 also supplies the grounds and procedure for ejectment: a revenue officer may eject a Government lessee for failure to pay rent for three months from the due date, for using the land for a purpose other than that for which it was granted, on expiry of the term of the lease, or for contravention of the terms and conditions of the grant — but no ejectment order may be passed without giving the lessee an opportunity of being heard. The Government lessee is thus a creature of grant: weaker rights, contractual tenure, and a defined exit route for the State. Two consequences follow that aspirants should retain. First, because the tenure is contractual and assimilated to the Government Grants Act, 1895, the general protective doctrines of tenancy law — implied renewal, protection from rack-renting, statutory heritability — do not attach unless the grant itself or an express provision of the Code so provides; Section 3 of the 1895 Act insulates the grant from the ordinary operation of the Transfer of Property Act, so the State's stipulations prevail over general law. Second, the Government lessee cannot, merely by length of possession or payment of rent, mature into a Bhumiswami; conferral of Bhumiswami status is a creature of statute (Section 158, and the occupancy-tenant route under Sections 189–190), not of lapse of time. The Government lessee therefore remains the most precarious of the three holders so long as the grant subsists.

Devolution and succession: Bhumiswami interest follows personal law

Because the Bhumiswami's interest is proprietary, its devolution on death is governed by general personal law, not by a special tenancy rule. In Bajaya v. Gopikabai, AIR 1978 SC 793 (also reported (1978) 2 SCC 542), the Supreme Court held that the expression "personal law" in the tenure-devolution provision (Section 151 of the antecedent Code) comprehends the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 — so succession to a Bhumiswami/Bhumidhari holding follows the personal law as it stands at the date of death, including amendments to Hindu law, and not the law as it stood when the Code was enacted. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had earlier reached the same destination in Nahar Hirasingh v. Mst. Dukalhin (1973), holding that a Bhumiswami is a "tenure-holder" within Section 4 of the Hindu Succession Act, so that the central succession statute applies harmoniously with the Code. The practical upshot: a Government lessee's interest, being contractual and non-proprietary, does not devolve in the same proprietary manner — it lives and dies with the terms of the grant.

Comparing the three categories

The three labels can be aligned on a single axis of security of tenure. The Bhumiswami is the apex: a heritable, transferable, near-proprietary tenure held from the State, protected against arbitrary ejectment, subject mainly to land revenue and to transfer curbs (ceiling, mortgage minimums, and the tribal-land protection of Sections 165(6) and 170-B). The Bhumidhar is not a present-day category in Chhattisgarh at all — it is a pre-1959 Mahakoshal tenure that Section 158(a) merged upward into Bhumiswami, surviving only as a feeder-class label. The Government lessee sits at the base: a residual, contractual holder under Section 181 whose rights are defined by the terms of the grant under Section 182 read with the Government Grants Act, 1895, and who is ejectable on the statutory grounds. For the institutional machinery that creates, records and adjudicates these statuses, see the revenue officers' hierarchy and powers and the broader Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code hub.