Encroachments and Eviction (Sections 248–254)

Sections 248 to 254 are the Code's enforcement teeth. They let revenue officers do summarily what a civil court would take years to achieve: throw a trespasser off Government or private land, forfeit his crop and structures, fine him, and even commit him to civil prison if he clings on. For the judiciary aspirant the cluster repays close reading because it pairs a near-criminal coercive power with strict procedural and limitation safeguards, and because the Supreme Court and the Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh High Courts have repeatedly policed the line between this summary jurisdiction and the ordinary civil suit on title.

The scheme of Sections 248-254

The encroachment block sits in the chapter on Government and other public lands and is best read as two distinct remedies bolted onto a set of incidental provisions. Section 248 protects public land: it empowers the Tahsildar to summarily eject anyone who unauthorisedly occupies unoccupied land, abadi, service land or land set apart for a special purpose under Section 237. Section 250 protects private tenure: it lets a bhumiswami who has been improperly dispossessed recover possession through the Tahsildar instead of a regular civil suit. Sandwiched between and after them are Section 249 (regulation of fishing, hunting, quarrying and the like on Government land), Section 251 (vesting of tanks in the State Government), Section 252 (maintenance of works of public utility) and the consequential provisions through Section 254. Throughout, the operative officer is the Tahsildar, with the Sub-Divisional Officer holding the heavier coercive powers of enhanced fine and civil imprisonment. The cluster builds directly on the land classifications introduced in our definitions of land-holder, tenant and bhumiswami and is administered through the officer ladder explained in Revenue officers: hierarchy and powers. The unifying idea is that the State should not have to litigate like an ordinary plaintiff to clear its own land of trespassers, and that a bhumiswami wrongfully ousted should have a swift possessory door to knock on, while ultimate questions of ownership stay with the civil court. Reading the seven sections together, three threads recur: the Tahsildar as the first-instance officer, the Sub-Divisional Officer as the holder of the punitive powers, and a deliberate limitation and natural-justice frame that keeps these fast remedies from becoming arbitrary. An aspirant who memorises which officer does what, and which clause of Section 257 bars the civil court, has the bulk of the chapter under control.

Section 248: penalty for unauthorisedly taking possession

Section 248(1) is the workhorse. Any person who unauthorisedly takes or remains in possession of unoccupied land, abadi, service land or land set apart for a special purpose under Section 237 "may be summarily ejected by order of the Tahsildar." The verb is deliberate: this is not adjudication of title but a quick administrative removal of a trespasser from public land. Three consequences follow ejectment. First, any standing crop, building or other work that the encroacher does not remove within the time the Tahsildar fixes is liable to forfeiture, and the cost of removal and of restoring the land to its original condition is recoverable as an arrear of land revenue. Second, the encroacher is liable to pay rent for the period of unauthorised occupation at twice the rate admissible for such land in the locality. Third, he is liable to a fine, originally capped at five thousand rupees and enhanced by amendment to twenty-five thousand rupees, with a further daily fine for every day the occupation continues after the first ejectment. The land classifications that trigger the section flow from the record of rights, which is the primary evidence of what is unoccupied or set-apart land. Two qualifications deserve emphasis. The power is confined to public land of the enumerated classes; an occupier of someone else's bhumiswami land is dealt with under Section 250, not Section 248, so identifying the character of the land at the outset is the threshold inquiry. And the word "summarily" describes the procedure, not the absence of jurisdictional fact-finding: the Tahsildar must still be satisfied that the land falls within an enumerated class and that the occupation is unauthorised, findings that can be tested in revision. The escalating daily fine is designed to make continued defiance progressively expensive, complementing the civil-prison sanction discussed below.

Gram Panchayat resolutions and the fine ceiling

Section 248(1-A), an enforcement-tightening insertion, addresses inertia at the field level. Where a Gram Panchayat passes a resolution about a particular unauthorised possession, the Tahsildar must start and complete the proceedings under the section within thirty days of receiving information of that resolution. The provision converts a discretionary power into a time-bound duty once the village body has spoken, and is a favourite of examiners testing whether students notice the mandatory "shall." The fine power is then split between two officers. The Tahsildar may himself impose a fine up to a stated ceiling; where he considers a higher fine warranted, he must refer the case to the Sub-Divisional Officer, who, after giving the party an opportunity of being heard, passes such order as to fine as he deems fit. This bifurcation reflects the general design of the Code, under which heavier coercive powers climb the officer ladder set out in Revenue officers: hierarchy and powers.

Civil prison: the coercive teeth of Section 248

The most striking feature of Section 248 is its quasi-penal sanction. Under Section 248(2-A), if a person continues in unauthorised occupation for more than seven days after the date of the order of ejectment, the Sub-Divisional Officer shall cause him to be apprehended and sent, with a warrant, to be confined in a civil prison. The period is fifteen days in the case of a first ejectment and three months in the case of a second or subsequent ejectment, and this is without prejudice to the fine. Two limits temper the power. First, the section expressly provides that no woman shall be arrested or detained under it, a safeguard mirroring Section 56 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Second, because liberty is at stake, courts insist on strict compliance with the seven-day window, a valid order of ejectment as the foundation, and a genuine opportunity of hearing. The combination of forfeiture, double rent, fine and imprisonment makes Section 248 one of the few revenue provisions that bite almost like a penal statute.

Section 250: reinstatement of a bhumiswami improperly dispossessed

Section 250 is the private-land counterpart. Where a bhumiswami or his successor-in-interest has been improperly dispossessed, the Tahsildar may, on application or suo motu, issue notice to the occupant to show the grounds of his possession, hold such enquiry as he thinks fit, and, if satisfied that the bhumiswami was improperly dispossessed, order restoration of possession and put him back on the land. The remedy is summary and possessory, not a determination of title: it answers the narrow question of who was wrongfully ousted, leaving questions of ownership to be fought elsewhere. The section thus complements, rather than replaces, the title machinery built on the record of rights and updated through mutation of land records. Restoration is reinforced by compensation for the period of wrongful occupation, computed on a pro-rata basis fixed by the section, and by a fine on the wrongful occupant. The expression "improperly dispossessed" is the heart of the enquiry: the bhumiswami must show that he was in possession and was ousted otherwise than by due process of law, for example by a high-handed entry rather than under a decree or a statutory order. Where the occupant himself claims to be a bhumiswami or to hold under a settled title, the dispute travels beyond the summary frame and is more properly resolved on title, a point the courts have used to prevent Section 250 from becoming a backdoor to try ownership. The remedy is therefore powerful but narrow: it restores the status quo ante of possession and leaves the contest over right to a fuller forum.

Interim orders, limitation and civil prison under Section 250

Section 250 builds in both speed and a limitation bar. At any stage of the enquiry the Tahsildar may pass an interim order directing the occupant to hand over possession to the bhumiswami, but only where he finds that the dispossession occurred within six months before the application or the start of suo motu proceedings, a recent-dispossession filter that prevents the interim power from being used to undo settled possession. An application for restoration must itself be made within two years from the date of dispossession or from the date on which the person's possession becomes unauthorised; beyond that window the bhumiswami is relegated to a civil suit. Mirroring Section 248, if the occupant continues in possession for more than seven days after the order of restoration, the Sub-Divisional Officer shall apprehend and confine him in civil prison for fifteen days for a first order and three months for second or subsequent orders, again without prejudice to the compensation and fine.

Summary remedy or civil suit? The Balveer Singh principle

The most examined doctrinal point is whether Sections 248 and 250 oust the civil court. In State of M.P. v. Balveer Singh, AIR 2001 MP 268, a Full Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court held that the word "may" in Section 250 makes the summary revenue remedy optional: a dispossessed bhumiswami need not first knock at the Tahsildar's door and may "straight away bring a suit in the civil court for declaration of his title and possession." The Bench also held, importantly, that bhumiswami rights cannot be acquired by adverse possession, the Code recognising only its own statutory modes of acquiring tenure. The Chhattisgarh High Court applied the same logic in Rukhmani Bai v. Samaru, treating Section 250 as a summary possessory remedy that does not bar a regular suit founded on title. The takeaway for an aspirant is that the revenue remedy and the civil suit run in parallel; the litigant chooses the forum, subject to the bar discussed next. The adverse-possession holding is itself a frequent examination point: because tenure under the Code can be acquired only in the modes the statute prescribes, a long-time encroacher on bhumiswami or Government land cannot mature his trespass into title merely by the passage of twelve years, which is precisely why the summary ejectment and restoration powers can operate without offending settled-possession principles. The practical lesson is that delay does not legitimise the encroacher, though it may, after two years, push the bhumiswami out of the Section 250 channel and into a civil suit.

How Section 257 caps the civil court

The freedom recognised in Balveer Singh is not unlimited, because Section 257 bars civil-court jurisdiction over matters the Code entrusts to revenue authorities. Its enumerated clauses expressly capture this chapter: a clause covers "any decision regarding penalty under Section 248 for unauthorisedly taking possession of land," and another covers "any decision regarding reinstatement of a bhumiswami improperly dispossessed" under Section 250. The settled reconciliation is that the question of title remains within the civil court's exclusive competence, while the specific decisions the revenue officer is empowered to make, the order of ejectment, the quantum of penalty, the fact of improper dispossession and the order of restoration, cannot be reagitated as such in a civil suit. A litigant therefore sues civilly on ownership but cannot ask the civil court to sit in appeal over a Section 248 or Section 250 order; that correction comes through the revenue appeal and revision channel.

Sections 249, 251 and 252: the incidental public-land provisions

Three neighbouring provisions round out the chapter and are worth a line each for objective papers. Section 249 empowers the State Government to make rules regulating fishing, hunting, shooting, quarrying and similar uses of unoccupied Government land and the natural products of such land; unauthorised exploitation is itself an encroachment punishable through the Section 248 machinery. Section 251 deals with the vesting of tanks: tanks situated on unoccupied land in which villagers held irrigation or nistar rights vested in the State Government with effect from the appointed date in 1959, subject to the Collector's inquiry and notice, with a right to claim compensation for non-irrigation interests within the prescribed period, pegged at fifteen times the land revenue assessable on the tank land. Section 252 obliges the relevant authority to maintain works of public utility, the embankments, bunds and channels on which the village's nistar and irrigation depend. These provisions tie back to the survey and settlement record explained in Revenue survey and settlement.

Procedure, appeal and natural justice

Because the powers under Sections 248 and 250 are coercive, the courts read in robust procedural safeguards even where the text is terse. An order of ejectment or restoration must rest on a finding reached after notice and a real opportunity of hearing; a mechanical order, or one that confines a person to civil prison without a valid foundational order, is liable to be quashed in revision or under Article 226. Orders are appealable and revisable through the ordinary revenue hierarchy, so an aggrieved encroacher or bhumiswami moves the Sub-Divisional Officer, the Collector, the Commissioner and ultimately the Board of Revenue rather than the civil court, dovetailing with Section 257. The interplay is best summarised thus: the Tahsildar acts fast, the SDO supplies the coercive muscle, the revenue appellate ladder corrects errors of process and penalty, and the civil court is reserved for the pure question of title, the architecture introduced in our Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code hub and introduction.