Every acre in Chhattisgarh begins as the State's. Section 57 of the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code, 1959 vests all land in the State Government, and only deliberate statutory acts of disposal — allotment in bhumiswami right, a government lease, setting land apart for common (nistar) use, or sale by the Collector — carve private or community interests out of that ownership. Because the source is public property, disposal is never a matter of executive whim: it is hemmed in by the Code, the Revenue Book Circulars, and the constitutional command of Article 14 that public largesse be distributed fairly. This article maps the disposal framework, the officers who operate it, the limits the courts have imposed, and the remedies when land is wrongly granted or wrongly grabbed.
State ownership: the well from which all disposal is drawn
Disposal presupposes title, and title begins with Section 57. It declares that all lands, public roads, paths and lanes, bridges, ditches, dikes and fences, rivers, streams, tanks, ponds, canals, lakes and flowing water, and all standing and flowing water, mines, minerals and quarries vest in and are the property of the State Government, save in so far as any rights of any person were subsisting at the commencement of the Code. Disputes between the State and any person on such rights are decided by the Collector. This vesting is the constitutional cousin of Article 296, under which property accruing by escheat, lapse or as bona vacantia falls to the State. The practical consequence is that no one holds Chhattisgarh land except as a grantee, a tenure-holder, or an encroacher; there is no third category of "ownerless" land available for spontaneous private appropriation. The Supreme Court in Chigurupati Venkata Subbayya v. Paladuga Anjayya (1972) clarified the corollary: vesting in the State does not by itself extinguish pre-existing community rights of user over the land, so the State takes the land burdened with subsisting recorded rights. Disposal, therefore, is the orderly process of converting this State ownership into defined private or communal interests under the Code.
The recognised modes of disposal
The Code does not use a single omnibus "disposal" section; instead it distributes the power across the kinds of interest that can be created. The principal modes are: (i) allotment of unoccupied land in bhumiswami right under Section 158(3), which confers full ownership-grade tenure; (ii) grant of a government lease under Section 181, creating the inferior, terminable interest of a government lessee who has no right to transfer or to trees and is liable to ejectment for breach; (iii) setting land apart for public and communal purposes — nistar, abadi (residential), pasture, cremation and burial grounds, schools and the like — under Sections 234 to 237; and (iv) conferral of house-site rights on village residents. Each mode answers a different policy need, and the choice among them is structured by rules made under the Code and by the executive Revenue Book Circulars. The unifying principle is that disposal must follow a recognised statutory channel; an allotment that does not fit any channel is void, not merely irregular. The classification of the recipient — bhumiswami, government lessee or holder of nistar — is therefore not a label but the very measure of the interest disposed of, a point developed in our note on the core definitions.
Allotment of unoccupied land in bhumiswami right
The most consequential disposal is the grant of bhumiswami right over unoccupied government land. Section 158(3) provides that a person to whom land is allotted in bhumiswami right by the State Government, the Collector or an Allotment Officer, or who held such land under a lease before the relevant amendment, is deemed to be a bhumiswami in respect of that land and is subject to all the rights and liabilities of a bhumiswami under the Code. "Unoccupied land" is statutorily defined as the land in a village other than abadi or service land and other than land already held by a bhumiswami, a tenant or a government lessee — in short, the genuinely available State pool. To protect weaker allottees from distress sales, Section 158(3) embeds a crucial restraint: no such allottee shall transfer the land within ten years from the date of the lease or allotment. Allotment policy is administered through the revenue hierarchy and prioritises landless agricultural labourers and members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, reflecting the agrarian-reform purpose of the Code. A breach of the transfer bar renders the transaction liable to be set aside and the land resumed.
Government lessees: the lesser, terminable grant
Where the State wishes to part with possession without parting with ownership, it disposes of the land by lease. Section 181 defines a government lessee as a person holding land from the State Government, or to whom the right to occupy land has been granted by the State Government or the Collector under the Code and rules, otherwise than as a bhumiswami. The government lessee's tenure is deliberately fragile: he holds for the term and on the conditions of the lease, has no transferable interest in the land or its trees absent permission, and is liable to ejectment on contravention of the lease conditions or unauthorised retention after expiry. This mode is the workhorse for temporary cultivation leases, leases of tank-beds, and commercial or industrial occupation pending a firmer grant. Because the interest is contractual and statutory rather than proprietary, cancellation of the lease extinguishes the lessee's right, title and interest and the Collector may direct delivery of possession after ejectment, using such force as necessary. The government lessee thus illustrates the Code's graduated approach to disposal — a spectrum running from full bhumiswami ownership down to bare licensed possession.
Disposal for communal use: the nistar patrak
Not all government land is disposed of to individuals; much is dedicated to the village in common. Section 234 requires the Sub-Divisional Officer to prepare, for every village, a nistar patrak embodying a scheme of management of all unoccupied land in the village and all matters incidental thereto — including the terms for grazing, for taking wood, timber, fuel or other forest produce, for use of village roads and pathways, and for the disposal of refuse. Section 235 lists the further matters the Collector may provide for, such as removal of manure and storage of crops. Section 237 empowers the Collector to set apart unoccupied land for the exercise of nistar rights, for forest growth, for pasture, for cremation and burial grounds, for encamping, threshing floors, bazaars, skinning grounds, public purposes and similar village needs, and bars the land so set apart from being diverted to any other purpose except with the Collector's sanction. This is disposal by dedication: the land remains State-owned but is impressed with a communal trust. The integrity of this category is closely guarded by the courts, as discussed below.
Wajib-ul-arz: recording the customary terms of disposal
The communal and customary terms on which government and other land may be used are themselves recorded, so that disposal does not float on unwritten claims. Section 242 provides for the wajib-ul-arz — the village administration paper — in which the Sub-Divisional Officer records the customs of the village in respect of (a) the rights of persons to irrigation or to the use of water for agricultural purposes, whether from a well, tank, river or other source, and (b) rights of way and other easements, and the right to fishing, in any land or water not belonging to or controlled or managed by the State Government or a local authority. The wajib-ul-arz is conclusive proof of the existence of a recorded custom until the contrary is proved or it is modified by a decree or order of a competent court. Read with the record of rights, the wajib-ul-arz ensures that when land is set apart or used in common, the precise content of the communal right is documented and enforceable, reducing the scope for disputes over what was actually disposed of.
Diversion and re-assessment of disposed land
Disposal of government land fixes the purpose for which the land is granted, and that purpose drives the revenue payable. Section 58 makes all land liable to land revenue except land wholly exempted by special grant, contract or law, and expressly treats premium, rent, lease money and quit-rent as land revenue. Section 59 then provides that the assessment of land revenue is to be made with reference to the purpose for which the land is used — agriculture, dwelling-house sites, industrial or commercial use, mining under lease, residential colonies, charitable, educational or public-institutional use, and so on — and that where land assessed for one purpose is diverted to another, the land revenue becomes liable to be altered and re-assessed in accordance with the diverted purpose, under rules made by the State Government. A government grantee who changes the use of disposed land therefore triggers re-assessment and, frequently, a premium; only diversion to certain public or charitable purposes is treated indulgently. Section 60 empowers the Collector to assess land not previously assessed, in accordance with the rules. The disposal is thus a living arrangement: the State's revenue interest follows the land's actual use throughout the currency of the grant.
Disposal of house-sites and abadi land
A distinct strand of disposal addresses where villagers live. The Code reserves abadi (the village residential site) from the pool of allottable unoccupied land and contains provisions for conferring rights to hold house-sites. Persons in occupation of house-sites in the abadi free of land revenue are protected, and over time such occupants have been recognised as having bhumiswami-grade rights in their dwelling plots. This residential-disposal policy has been reinforced by special legislation in Chhattisgarh conferring bhumiswami rights on occupants of dwelling sites (the Vas-Sthan scheme), which converts long-settled possession of house-sites into secure ownership. The rationale parallels the agrarian allotment policy under Section 158: the State, as universal landowner, uses its disposal power as an instrument of social justice, regularising the homes of the landless rather than treating them as encroachers. Crucially, however, this benign disposal is confined to genuine residential occupation of land lawfully available for the purpose; it cannot be stretched to legitimise grabs of land set apart for common village use, which the courts have refused to regularise.
The constitutional limits: no arbitrary disposal of public land
Because disposed land is public property, the discretion to grant it is fettered by Article 14. In Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2011), the Supreme Court quashed the allotment of twenty acres of government land to a private institution made without advertisement or competitive process, holding that the State and its instrumentalities cannot give largesse — including land — to anyone at their sweet will; every action of the State in distributing public resources must be informed by reason, must satisfy the test of fairness, and must ordinarily be preceded by a transparent, public process so that all eligible persons have an equal opportunity. The Court reiterated that the State holds such property as trustee for the people, not as a private proprietor free to favour individuals. For Chhattisgarh, this means that even where the Collector has statutory power to allot or lease under Sections 158 or 181, the manner of disposal must conform to the Revenue Book Circulars and to constitutional fairness; a discretionary, behind-closed-doors grant is liable to be struck down on judicial review. Disposal power, in short, is a public trust, not personal patronage.
Encroachment: unauthorised "self-disposal" and its consequences
The mirror image of lawful disposal is encroachment — a citizen helping himself to State land without any grant. Section 248 penalises a person who unauthorisedly takes or remains in possession of any land which is the property of the State Government: such a person may be summarily ejected by the Tahsildar and is liable to pay assessment and a penalty, and any crop or building raised is liable to forfeiture. The provision draws a clear line: occupation of government land confers no right and ripens into no title merely by lapse of time, because the encroacher is, by definition, outside the disposal scheme. The Supreme Court drove this home in Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab (2011), directing that illegal encroachments on village common land (gram sabha / panchayat land) be removed and refusing to countenance schemes regularising such encroachments, however long-standing or substantial the construction, because that land is held for the common use of the villagers and cannot be appropriated by powerful individuals. Read with Section 237's bar on diverting land set apart for nistar, Jagpal Singh means that what has been disposed of to the community by dedication cannot be re-disposed to a trespasser through regularisation.
Remedies: undoing wrongful disposal and dispossession
The Code supplies remedies on both sides of the disposal line. Where a bhumiswami is improperly dispossessed of his land — including land lawfully disposed to him — Section 250 empowers the Tahsildar to reinstate him in possession and may award compensation, a summary remedy that protects the integrity of a completed disposal against private interference. Where, conversely, a disposal is itself unlawful — an allotment or lease cancelled for fraud, ineligibility or breach of the ten-year transfer bar under Section 158(3), or a grant struck down for arbitrariness — the right, title and interest of the grantee ceases, the land reverts to the State (or to the panchayat where it manages the land), and the Collector may direct delivery of possession after ejectment, using such force as necessary. Cancellation applications are time-bound under the Code. Beyond the Code, an aggrieved citizen may invoke the writ jurisdiction to challenge a disposal that violates the rules or Article 14, as in Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress. Together these remedies ensure that disposal of government land is reversible when it is unlawful and protected when it is lawful — preserving the Code's central premise of State stewardship over land, a theme traced from the introduction to the Code through every later chapter.
Frequently asked questions
Which provision vests government land in the State of Chhattisgarh?
Section 57 of the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code, 1959 declares that all lands, public roads, water bodies, mines, minerals and quarries vest in and are the property of the State Government, subject only to rights of any person subsisting when the Code came into force. Disputes between the State and any person over such rights are decided by the Collector.
What is the difference between a bhumiswami and a government lessee?
A bhumiswami allotted unoccupied land under Section 158(3) holds full, heritable, transferable ownership-grade tenure (subject to a ten-year ban on transfer). A government lessee under Section 181 merely holds possession from the State on lease terms, has no transferable interest or right to trees without permission, and is liable to ejectment for breach or after expiry.
Can a person who has occupied government land for many years claim ownership?
No. Section 248 treats unauthorised possession of State land as a penal encroachment, summarily ejectable by the Tahsildar. In Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab (2011) the Supreme Court held that illegal encroachments on common village land cannot be regularised and must be removed, regardless of how long they have stood or how substantial the construction.
Can the government allot land to a private party without inviting applications?
Generally no. In Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress v. State of M.P. (2011) the Supreme Court held that government land is public property held in trust, and largesse cannot be granted at the State's sweet will; disposal must be fair, reasoned and ordinarily preceded by a transparent public process satisfying Article 14, failing which the allotment is liable to be quashed.
What is a nistar patrak and how does it relate to disposal of land?
Under Section 234 the Sub-Divisional Officer prepares a nistar patrak for every village — a scheme for managing all unoccupied land, including grazing, fuel and timber rights and use of village ways. Together with Section 237, under which the Collector sets land apart for nistar, pasture, burial grounds and public purposes, it represents disposal by communal dedication, and such land cannot be diverted without the Collector's sanction.
Can government land disposed of for one purpose be used for another?
Only with consequences. Section 59 provides that land revenue is assessed by reference to the purpose for which land is used, and where land is diverted from the granted purpose to another, the revenue is re-assessed for the diverted purpose under the rules, often with a premium. Land set apart for nistar under Section 237 cannot be diverted at all without the Collector's sanction.