Right of Tenant to Purchase Land (Sections 18A–18C)

The 1976 Fifth Amendment converted the Goa, Daman and Diu Agricultural Tenancy Act, 1964 from a mere security-of-tenure statute into a full "land to the tiller" measure. The engine of that conversion is the compulsory-purchase scheme of Sections 18A to 18C: on a fixed date the cultivating tenant is deemed to have bought the land he tills, special classes get a deferred right to do so, and the Mamlatdar steps in to fix the price and pass title. This article works through the deeming fiction, its exceptions, and the price-fixing machinery, situating each provision in the agrarian-reform scheme explained in our introduction to the Act.

Section 18A: Tillers' Day and the Deeming Fiction

Section 18A is the operative heart of the purchase scheme. It declares that "on the tillers' day, every tenant shall, subject to the other provisions of this Act, be deemed to have purchased from his landlord the land held by him as a tenant and such land shall vest in him free from all encumbrances subsisting on the said day." Three features stand out. First, the transfer is automatic: it operates by force of law, not by any agreement between landlord and tenant, and does not depend on the tenant filing an application. Second, it is dated to a single fixed point - the "tillers' day" - introduced by the Fifth Amendment of 1976 and judicially treated as 20 April 1976, the date the amending Bill was introduced in the Legislative Assembly. Third, the land vests "free from all encumbrances," wiping out mortgages and charges created by the landlord so that the tenant takes a clean title.

The deeming fiction reflects the Act's agrarian-reform object: to abolish the rent-collecting intermediary and unite ownership with cultivation. Because the vesting is compulsory, the tenant who qualifies cannot in principle decline the benefit, and the landlord cannot defeat it by private arrangement. This compulsory character distinguishes the right to purchase from the purely defensive security of tenure that the Act otherwise confers. The deeming language is also significant for evidence: because the legislature has supplied the conclusion that a purchase has occurred, neither party need prove an actual sale, and the inquiry before the Mamlatdar is confined to identifying the holding and fixing the price rather than testing whether a transaction took place.

Which Tenant Is Deemed to Purchase

The benefit of Section 18A runs to a "tenant" as the Act understands that term. The crucial point is that the statutory definition is wide: it embraces not only contractual lessees but also persons deemed to be tenants and protected cultivators, as discussed in our note on the definitions of tenant, landlord and land. A person lawfully cultivating land belonging to another, who is not a member of the owner's family or a paid servant, is presumed to be a tenant; once that status is established, the Section 18A purchase follows as a consequence.

The land must also be "land" within the Act - that is, agricultural land - and held "as a tenant" on the tillers' day. Land in the personal cultivation of the landlord, or land that had already lawfully reverted to him before that day, is outside the deeming fiction. The interaction with the landlord's right to take back land is governed by the separate scheme on resumption of land by the landlord; where resumption has not been validly effected before the tillers' day, the tenant's purchase prevails.

Exceptions and Carve-Outs from Section 18A

The phrase "subject to the other provisions of this Act" signals that the deeming fiction is not absolute. The most important carve-out is the postponement built into Section 18B for tenants under a disability, examined below. Beyond that, certain categories of landlords and lands are kept outside the purchase scheme by the Act's broader structure - for example, lands held by or for institutions and the special position of communidade (village commune) lands, which the Supreme Court addressed in Communidade of Tivim v. State of Goa (2025 INSC 835), holding that tenanted communidade land cannot be diverted to non-agricultural use and that a communidade cannot, without the Tribunal's sanction, compromise away tenancy proceedings in a way that converts tenancy into ownership outside the statutory scheme.

Where the tenant is one of the specially protected classes, the date of deemed purchase is simply deferred rather than denied. In every other case, the purchase crystallises on the tillers' day and the only remaining questions are the price and the issue of a certificate - matters entrusted to the Mamlatdar under Sections 18C and following.

Section 18B: Deferred Right for Minors, Widows and Others

Section 18B carves out tenants who, on the tillers' day, are unable to take an informed decision or to cultivate personally. It covers a tenant who is a minor, a widow, a person subject to a mental or physical disability (unsoundness of mind), or a person serving as a member of the armed forces. For these classes the automatic purchase under Section 18A does not bite on the tillers' day; instead, the right to purchase is preserved and may be exercised within a defined window once the disability ends.

The window in each case is one year. A minor may exercise the right within one year of attaining majority. Where the tenant is a widow, the successor-in-title may purchase within one year of the date her interest ceases. A person of unsound mind acquires the right within one year of regaining sound mind, and a serving member of the armed forces within one year of ceasing to serve. The object is protective: the law refuses to fasten an irrevocable purchase, with its price liability, on a person who cannot presently manage the holding, while still guaranteeing that the land-to-tiller benefit is not lost. Until the right is exercised, the tenancy and its security of tenure continue to protect the holding.

Section 18C: The Mamlatdar's Price-Fixing Machinery

Section 18C provides the administrative machinery that turns the abstract deeming fiction into a recorded transfer. As soon as may be after the tillers' day, the Mamlatdar must publish a public notice (in the Official Gazette and by affixture) calling upon all tenants deemed to have purchased land under Section 18A, all landlords, and all other interested persons to appear before him on a specified date. The Mamlatdar then holds an inquiry into each holding to ascertain the particulars necessary for fixing the price.

In the course of that inquiry the Mamlatdar may examine the tenant, the landlord and other necessary persons on oath. He is to ascertain whether the tenant is under any subsisting pecuniary obligation to the landlord, whether the landlord has made any adjustment with the tenant outside the proposed purchase price, and whether the tenant has any objection to the price. He may also seek the opinion of the Director of Agriculture, Zonal Agricultural Officers, Block Development Officers and village panchayats. Having completed the inquiry, the Mamlatdar determines the purchase price for the land. This is the central jurisdictional fact: the price is fixed by the revenue authority, not negotiated between the parties.

How the Purchase Price Is Computed

The Goa scheme departs from the open-ended "multiple of rent" formula familiar from the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948. Instead, the price the Mamlatdar fixes is anchored to a statutory schedule of values graded by the class of land - garden land under coconut or arecanut, and rice land of the Kher or Morod classes each carry prescribed per-hectare values, with the better-quality garden and Kher rice land valued higher than inferior Morod land. The Mamlatdar applies these prescribed figures to the area and class of the holding, adjusting for the matters disclosed at the inquiry, such as standing encumbrances or pecuniary dues between the parties.

Because the price is statutorily anchored rather than market-driven, the purchase remains affordable to the cultivator - the entire point of an agrarian-reform measure. The fixed price is conceptually distinct from the maximum rent permissible under the Act, although both reflect the same legislative policy of capping what the cultivator must pay. Once the price is determined under Section 18C it becomes payable in the manner laid down by the following provisions.

Payment of Price and the Certificate of Purchase

The price determined under Section 18C does not have to be paid in one stroke. Section 18E permits the tenant-purchaser to pay either in a lump sum or in equal annual instalments, with the first payment falling due within a defined period and interest accruing on default. The instalment facility is integral to the reform: a tiller of modest means is not required to find the whole purchase money at once.

On deposit of the price (or its first instalment), the Mamlatdar issues a certificate of purchase, which records the tenant as owner. By analogy with the parallel Bombay scheme, the certificate is treated as strong evidence of the completed statutory purchase. In Saraswatibai Trimbak Gaikwad v. Damodhar D. Motiwale (2002) 4 SCC, the Supreme Court, construing the cognate Bombay Act, held that a certificate of purchase is conclusive proof of ownership unless and until set aside in revision, so that a civil court decree for possession against the tenant-purchaser cannot be executed while the certificate stands. The same logic protects the Goa tenant-purchaser whose certificate has issued under this Act.

When the Purchase Becomes Ineffective

The compulsory purchase is not unconditional: it can lapse. If the tenant-purchaser fails to pay the price or instalments and the arrears cannot be recovered, the purchase is declared ineffective. Crucially, an ineffective purchase does not hand the land back to the former landlord. Under Section 18J the land instead vests in the State for disposal to other eligible cultivators in a statutory order of priority - members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, other landless agricultural labourers, ex-servicemen, cooperative farming societies and the like.

This is a defining feature of the Goa model and a frequent examination point: the landlord, having lost ownership on the tillers' day, gains nothing from the tenant's default. The land remains within the pool of agrarian-reform beneficiaries. The High Court in Shri Ganapati Devasthan Saunsthan v. Collector, North Goa (2000(4) ALL MR 846) underlined this object, holding in the context of Section 18K that the land must stay in agricultural use and that any onward transfer can only be to the categories of persons set out in Section 18J - confirming that the entire scheme exists to keep land with tillers, not to restore intermediary landlordism.

Restrictions on the Land After Purchase

Title acquired under Sections 18A to 18C is not freely alienable. Section 18K prohibits the transfer of the purchased land by sale, gift, exchange, mortgage, lease or assignment, and bars its partition, without the previous sanction of the Mamlatdar. Sanction is granted only in limited situations and, as Ganapati Devasthan confirms, only where the transferee falls within the eligible categories and the land will continue in agricultural use. The cultivator becomes an owner, but a regulated one - the statute prevents the reform from being undone by the new owner promptly selling out to a non-cultivator or for non-agricultural development.

These post-purchase fetters dovetail with the Act's prohibition on the resumption of land for non-agricultural purposes and with the controls on creation of fresh tenancies. Together they ensure that the land, once it reaches the tiller, stays both agricultural and in cultivating hands, completing the policy begun by the deeming fiction in Section 18A. A transfer made in breach of Section 18K, without the requisite sanction, is invalid, and the Mamlatdar may treat the land as available for disposal under the priority scheme, reinforcing that ownership conferred by the Act carries continuing statutory obligations rather than the unfettered dominion of an ordinary owner.

Jurisdiction: The Mamlatdar's Exclusive Domain

Because the purchase scheme is administrative, questions about who is a tenant, whether a deemed purchase took place, what the price is, and whether a certificate should issue are entrusted exclusively to the Mamlatdar and the appellate and revisional authorities under the Act, with the civil court's jurisdiction ousted. This mirrors the position the Supreme Court took for the Bombay Act in Saraswatibai Trimbak Gaikwad, where it held that only the statutory authority can decide tenancy and purchase questions and that a civil court faced with such a question must refer it and abide by the authority's decision.

For aspirants the practical takeaway is that a landlord who disputes a deemed purchase cannot simply sue for possession in a civil court; he must challenge the Mamlatdar's order or the certificate within the Act's hierarchy. This jurisdictional exclusivity, combined with the conclusiveness of the certificate, gives the tenant-purchaser a robust, self-contained statutory title - the practical fulfilment of the "land to the tiller" promise that runs through the whole Goa Agricultural Tenancy Act.