Rights and Liabilities of Bhumiswami

When the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code, 1959 swept away the old patchwork of tenancies, it left a single proprietary tenure standing: the Bhumiswami. Sections 157 to 181 of Chapter XII define what this holder may do, what he must answer for, and the safeguards the State retains over the soil. The Bhumiswami enjoys a heritable, transferable interest that approaches ownership, yet it is hedged by ceiling, tribal-protection and lease restrictions that the courts have repeatedly enforced. This note sets out the full bundle of rights and the corresponding liabilities, anchored to the bare provisions and the leading authorities.

One Tenure: The Bhumiswami

Section 157 is the foundation of the chapter: “there shall be only one class of tenure-holders of lands held from the State to be known as Bhumiswami.” The Code thus abolished the colonial hierarchy of malik makbuza, occupancy tenants, pakka and ordinary tenants, and gair haqdar holders, collapsing them into a single proprietary tenure. Section 158 then enumerates the persons who, on the commencement of the Code, became Bhumiswami — former proprietors and recognised tenants of the Mahakoshal, Madhya Bharat, Bhopal, Vindhya Pradesh and Sironj regions, each clause mapping an erstwhile tenancy onto the new tenure. Understanding who qualifies presupposes the statutory vocabulary covered in our note on the definitions of land, holder, tenant and Bhumiswami, and the structural overview in the Chhattisgarh Land Revenue Code hub.

Section 158(3) adds a later-acquired class: persons holding under a lease from the State Government or Collector, or allottees of Government land, who are deemed Bhumiswami subject to all the rights and liabilities of the tenure — but barred from transferring the land for ten years from the date of lease or allotment. This deferred-transfer condition is the first of the Code’s many liabilities attached to the tenure, and it reflects a deliberate policy of preventing speculative resale of land that the State has parted with for the holder’s own cultivation. The significance of a single proprietary tenure is structural: every right and liability discussed below attaches uniformly to “the Bhumiswami,” so the holder of a vast irrigated holding and the allottee of a small Government plot stand on the same statutory footing, distinguished only by the conditions on which they entered the tenure.

Nature of the Bhumiswami Interest

Section 159 declares the content of the tenure: a Bhumiswami has “all the rights and shall be subject to all the liabilities conferred or imposed upon a Bhumiswami by or under this Code.” The interest is proprietary in substance — the State retains the radical title and the right to land revenue, but the Bhumiswami holds a permanent, heritable and transferable estate. The right is not absolute dominion; it is a tenure held “from the State,” and the State’s reversionary and regulatory powers, exercised through the hierarchy of revenue officers, qualify it throughout.

Because the tenure is the foundation of every entry in the village record, the Bhumiswami’s name and the nature of his interest are recorded in the record of rights and the field map maintained after survey and settlement. The proprietary character of the interest is what makes mutation, partition and transfer meaningful events that the Code regulates in detail.

It is important to read section 159 alongside the limiting sections that follow it. The phrase “all the rights … conferred or imposed … by or under this Code” is not a grant of unfettered ownership but an incorporation by reference of the entire scheme — the transfer controls of section 165, the leasing curbs of sections 168 and 169, the ceiling and tribal-protection provisions, and the revenue liability that runs throughout. A Bhumiswami therefore cannot point to section 159 to claim a power the Code elsewhere withholds; the section is the index to the bundle, not an enlargement of it.

The Right of Transfer (Section 165)

Section 165(1) confers the core power: “subject to the other provisions of this section and the provisions of section 168, a Bhumiswami may transfer any interest in his land.” Sale, gift, mortgage, lease and exchange are therefore permissible in principle. The qualifying clauses, however, are extensive. Where the Bhumiswami acquired the land from the State under section 158(3) or as a Government lessee who later became Bhumiswami, section 165 forbids transfer without the written permission of a Revenue Officer not below the rank of Collector, recorded for reasons. The freedom to transfer is thus conditional, not plenary, and the permission requirement is the principal liability fettering State-granted holdings.

The provision must be read with section 170, which avoids any transfer made in contravention of section 165: such a transfer is not a lawful acquisition and confers no title on the transferee. The interplay between an unrestricted general power and a web of statutory exceptions is the recurring theme of the tenure, and it is most acute in the protection of tribal land.

Tribal Land Protection: Section 165(6)

The most stringent fetter applies to Bhumiswami belonging to an aboriginal tribe declared as such by the State Government. Section 165(6) provides that in areas predominantly inhabited by aboriginal tribes, and from a date notified by the State, the land of such a Bhumiswami cannot be transferred by sale or otherwise to a person not belonging to the tribe; in other areas, such a transfer requires the prior permission of a Revenue Officer not below the rank of Collector, given for recorded reasons. Section 165(6-a) extends a parallel control to non-agricultural land. A contravening transfer is void under section 170, and section 170-B enables reversion of agricultural land of an aboriginal-tribe member that passed to a non-member, casting on the transferee in possession the burden of explaining how the land came to him.

The Supreme Court enforced this scheme firmly in Amrendra Pratap Singh v. Tej Bahadur Prajapati, (2004) 10 SCC 65 (AIR 2004 SC 3782), holding that a non-tribal cannot perfect title by adverse possession over tribal land: “acquisition of title in favour of a non-tribal by invoking the doctrine of adverse possession over the immovable property belonging to a tribal is prohibited by law.” The rationale — that a transferee cannot acquire a better title than the statute permits the tribal to part with — underlies the whole of section 165(6). The constitutional validity of the reversion machinery in sections 170-A and 170-B was upheld in Dhirendra Nath Sharma v. State of M.P., AIR 1986 MP 122, which treated such transactions as “unconscionable transactions between unequals” void from inception, and held that the evidentiary presumption in section 170-B(2) is merely a rule of evidence not usurping judicial function.

Permission to Transfer and Its Limits

Where permission is required, the granting authority and the scope of revisional control have been litigated recently. In State of Madhya Pradesh v. Dinesh Kumar, 2025 INSC 470, the Supreme Court held that an Additional Collector to whom the Collector’s powers had been lawfully delegated could validly grant permission under section 165(6) for a sale of tribal land lying outside a notified predominantly-tribal area, and that the Commissioner’s suo motu revisional order setting the permission aside was void because it was passed beyond the limitation period running from the date of knowledge. The decision underscores two liabilities-side propositions: the permission power is real and exercisable by the designated officer, and the State’s power of revision is itself time-bound.

The practical lesson is that a transferee taking land that was subject to section 165(6) must verify both the existence of valid permission and the competence of the officer who granted it; absent that, section 170 renders the acquisition a nullity, and the transferee’s possession is precarious.

Restrictions on Leasing (Sections 168–169)

The Bhumiswami’s right to lease is deliberately curtailed to prevent the re-emergence of an intermediary tenant class. Section 168 restricts the leasing of land comprised in a holding, permitting a lease only within prescribed limits of period; a Bhumiswami who is a disabled person, a widow, a minor, a member of the armed forces or otherwise within the protected categories enjoys a wider liberty to lease, while an able-bodied holder is tightly constrained. The object is to keep the tiller and the holder the same person wherever possible.

Section 169 supplies the sanction: an unauthorised lease, or a lease that continues beyond the permissible period, can ripen the cultivator’s position into an occupancy tenancy, fastening on the Bhumiswami a tenant he did not intend to create. Leasing is therefore both a right and a trap — exercised loosely, it erodes the very tenure it was meant to exploit. This is one of the clearest illustrations of a liability arising from the careless exercise of a right.

Succession and Devolution (Section 161)

The Bhumiswami interest is fully heritable. Section 161 provides that, subject to his personal law, the interest of a Bhumiswami shall, on his death, pass by inheritance, survivorship or bequest. The tenure does not lapse to the State on death; it devolves on the heirs, who step into the deceased’s rights and liabilities, including any subsisting transfer restriction under section 158(3) or section 165. The personal law of the holder — Hindu, Muslim or otherwise — governs the identity and shares of the successors, while the Code governs the consequences for the revenue record.

On devolution, the change must be reflected in the village papers through the process of mutation of land records, so that the record of rights names the current holder. Failure to mutate does not defeat the inheritance — mutation is a fiscal entry, not a document of title — but it leaves the heir without the presumptive evidentiary benefit that an up-to-date entry carries.

Right to Partition (Section 178)

Where land is held by more than one Bhumiswami as co-tenure-holders, section 178 confers a right of partition. A co-holder may apply to the Tahsildar for partition of the holding, and on partition the land revenue assessed on the holding is apportioned among the divided shares. The provision gives statutory machinery for severing joint holdings without resort to a civil suit for every division, and the Tahsildar’s partition operates on the revenue record while the underlying title questions, if seriously disputed, may be relegated to the civil court.

Partition is a right that carries a corresponding liability: each resulting holder becomes separately liable for the land revenue apportioned to his share, and the record of rights must be updated to reflect the new khasra and khata entries created by the division. The link between partition and the maintenance of the record of rights is therefore direct and continuing. The Tahsildar’s power to effect partition is administrative and fiscal; where the very existence or extent of a co-holder’s share is genuinely in dispute, the revenue partition cannot conclude the question of title, and the aggrieved party may have the matter adjudicated in a civil court, the revenue entry following the result. This division of labour between the revenue and civil jurisdictions is a recurring feature of the Code and prevents the Tahsildar’s summary partition from becoming a final pronouncement on ownership.

Liability for Land Revenue

The defining liability of the tenure is the obligation to pay land revenue. The Bhumiswami holds “from the State” and answers for the revenue assessed on his holding; the assessment is fixed and revised through the settlement process and recorded against his name. Land revenue is a first charge on the holding, and arrears are recoverable as such under the Code’s coercive-collection provisions, which can culminate in attachment and sale of the holding for default — subject, however, to the protection that the land of an aboriginal-tribe Bhumiswami enjoys against attachment and sale in execution of decrees.

The liability is not merely fiscal. Non-payment exposes the holding to processes that can divest the holder, making the revenue obligation the practical counterweight to the proprietary freedoms the tenure confers. The Bhumiswami’s security of tenure is, in the end, conditioned on discharging this primary public charge.

Rights Over the Holding and Its Use

Within the bundle conferred by section 159, the Bhumiswami enjoys the right to the exclusive use and occupation of his holding, the right to its produce, and the right to make improvements and to use the land for the purpose for which it is held. He may divert agricultural land to a non-agricultural use only on payment of premium and on obtaining the requisite diversion permission, the unauthorised diversion attracting penalty and revised assessment. The right to plant and fell trees, to sink wells, and to erect structures incidental to the agricultural use of the holding flows from the proprietary character of the tenure, subject always to any reservation of mines and minerals in favour of the State.

These use-rights are the everyday content of the tenure, and they are protected against trespass: a person occupying or using the Bhumiswami’s land without lawful authority is liable to be ejected and to pay assessment and penalty under the Code. The right of beneficial enjoyment and the liability to confine that enjoyment to lawful, assessed uses together complete the picture of the Bhumiswami’s estate.