"Disposal of government land" under the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Code, 2006 is not a single section but a tightly knit scheme: land that vests in or is entrusted to a Gram Panchayat is managed by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti, allotted for housing or admitted to cultivators in a statutory order of preference, leased only within defined limits, and recovered by the Collector when any of this is done in breach of the Code. The disposal power is therefore always a delegated and fiduciary power, never a proprietary one — the Gram Panchayat holds for the village, the Samiti acts under the Sub-Divisional Officer's control, and certain categories of public-utility land cannot be alienated at all. This article maps the entrustment in Chapter VIII, the abadi and bhumidhar-allotment machinery, the leasing limits, the lands frozen out of disposal by Section 77, and the Collector's cancellation jurisdiction under Section 128, read against the leading Supreme Court authority on village commons.
Vesting and entrustment: Section 59
The whole disposal scheme begins with Section 59, which empowers the State Government to entrust, or deem to have entrusted, to a Gram Panchayat or other local authority the lands and assets that historically vested in the State on abolition of zamindari — pasture land, village ways, tanks, ponds, fisheries, abadi sites, grove land, hats and bazars, and other public-utility land within the area of a Gram Sabha. Entrustment is the legal hinge: until land is entrusted under Section 59 it is managed directly by the State through revenue officers, but once entrusted the Gram Panchayat becomes the managing authority, though never the absolute owner. The continuity from the U.P. Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950 is deliberate — what was Gaon Sabha land under Sections 117 and 122-B of the 1950 Act is carried into the Code's Chapter VIII framework. Crucially, several other provisions feed land into the same pool: land that comes into a Gram Panchayat's possession "under any other provision of this Code" is treated alongside the Section 59 estate for the purpose of disposal, as Section 63 expressly recognises. The defined tenures that this land can be parcelled into are explained in our note on the definitions of land, bhumidhar, bhumiswami and asami, and the broader scheme is introduced in the introduction to the UP Revenue Code.
Management by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti: Section 60
Section 59 entrusts the land; Section 60 says who manages it. The superintendence, management and control of land entrusted under Section 59 vests in the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti (Land Management Committee), which exercises that power subject to the general supervision and control of the Sub-Divisional Officer and to such rules and directions as the State Government issues. This two-tier structure is the source of most disposal litigation: the Samiti proposes, but a valid disposal almost always requires the previous approval of the Sub-Divisional Officer, and an allotment or lease made without that approval — or in excess of the Samiti's competence — is open to cancellation. The disposal function is thus a managed power, not a discretionary largesse. The Samiti is a creature of statute holding land in trust for the village community, so it cannot favour individuals, sell to the highest bidder, or convert public-utility land to private use. The revenue hierarchy that supervises and corrects the Samiti — Sub-Divisional Officer, Collector, Board of Revenue — is set out in our note on revenue officers. Any disposal also has to be carried into the village records, so it interlocks with the duties discussed in the UP Revenue Code hub.
Allotment of abadi (housing) sites: Section 63
The most common form of disposal is the grant of abadi (residential) sites. Section 63(1) lets the Sub-Divisional Officer, of his own motion or on a resolution of the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti, earmark for abadi allotment all land entrusted or deemed entrusted to a Gram Panchayat under clause (i) of Section 59(2), and all land coming into the Gram Panchayat's possession under any other provision of the Code. Section 63(2) then empowers the Samiti, with the previous approval of the Sub-Divisional Officer and notwithstanding anything in the U.P. Panchayat Raj Act, 1947, to allot for house-building: any such vacant earmarked land; land earmarked for abadi under the U.P. Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1953; and land acquired under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 or the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The architecture is deliberately tight — the SDO controls what may be earmarked and must approve each allotment — precisely because abadi disposal historically attracted abuse. The recording of every such allotment in the village papers is governed by the regime in our note on maintenance and updation of the record of rights.
Order of preference for allotment: Section 64
Disposal of abadi sites is not first-come-first-served; Section 64 imposes a mandatory order of preference that gives the scheme its land-reform character. Sites are allotted, in order: first, to an agricultural labourer or village artisan residing in the Gram Sabha who belongs to a Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class, or a general-category person below the poverty line; then to any other agricultural labourer or village artisan residing in the Gram Sabha; and then to any other resident belonging to those reserved categories. Within each class, preference goes to a person who holds no house or has accommodation insufficient for the family's needs, and where rival claimants stand in the same class the Samiti draws lots. This statutory ranking is justiciable: an allotment that ignores the order of preference, or that allots to an outsider or an ineligible person, is liable to be set aside in cancellation proceedings. The preference scheme is the practical reason the Supreme Court in Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab carved out a narrow exception permitting regularisation only where commons had been allotted to the landless or to SC/ST beneficiaries — the very classes Section 64 protects.
Admission to cultivation: bhumidhar with non-transferable rights (Section 76)
Beyond house sites, government land is disposed of by admitting cultivators to it. A person admitted to land by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti in accordance with the Code becomes, under Section 76, a bhumidhar with non-transferable rights. This is a deliberately restricted tenure: the holding is permanent and heritable, so the allottee enjoys security, but it cannot be sold, mortgaged or gifted, which prevents the welfare grant from being flipped to a moneyed outsider. The non-transferable bar is the disposal scheme's anti-speculation device. Section 76 also provides for maturing of the tenure — a bhumidhar with non-transferable rights may, after the prescribed conditions, become a bhumidhar with transferable rights — and restricts subsequent leasing of such holdings. Because admission converts public land into a private (if fettered) tenure, it is hedged with the same controls as abadi allotment: the Samiti's previous approval requirement, the order of preference, and the Collector's cancellation power. The full taxonomy of bhumidhar and asami tenures, and how non-transferable rights sit between them, is developed in our note on land, bhumidhar, bhumiswami and asami.
Land that cannot be disposed of: Section 77
The outer limit of every disposal power is Section 77, headed "Bhumidhar rights not to accrue in certain lands." No person can acquire bhumidhar rights — and therefore no valid admission or allotment as bhumidhar can be made — in: khaliyan (threshing floors), manure pits, pasture land, or land normally used as a burial or cremation ground; land covered by water and used for growing singhara or similar produce; land in a river bed used for casual or occasional cultivation; tracts of shifting or unstable cultivation notified by the State Government; land set apart for taungya plantation; grove land entrusted to a Gram Panchayat under Section 59; and land included in a sullage farm or trenching ground so entrusted. These are the public-utility and ecologically sensitive lands of the village — ponds, pastures, cremation grounds, groves — held inalienably for the common good. An allotment of Section 77 land is void, not merely voidable. The Supreme Court enforced exactly this principle in Hinch Lal Tiwari v. Kamala Devi, AIR 2001 SC 3215, holding that a pond (talab) could not be allotted as house sites even after it was levelled, because such land must be protected for the ecology and common use of the village; and again, on UP facts, in Babu Singh v. Consolidation Officer, 2026 INSC 395, where the Court held a Sub-Divisional Officer cannot reclassify khalihan and pasture land to grant private pattas and that such pattas, read with Section 77(2) of the Code, are void ab initio — "what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly."
Leasing of land: limits under Section 94
Disposal of an interest short of ownership is done by lease, and the Code keeps even private leasing on a short leash. Section 94 permits a bhumidhar to lease his holding for agricultural purposes or for a solar energy plant, but caps an agricultural lease at fifteen years at a time (renewable by mutual consent) and a solar lease at up to thirty years, on mutually agreed terms with rent payable in cash, kind or share of produce. The point of the cap is to prevent a perpetual lease operating as a disguised transfer that would defeat the tenure restrictions. For land held by the Gram Panchayat, the lease power is exercised by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti under the Section 60 management regime and the Section 63–64 preference scheme, not at large, and a lease of reserved Section 77 land — pasture, pond, grove — is no more valid than an outright allotment. Government-lessee land carries its own protection: Section 151 treats unauthorised occupation of land held by a government lessee as trespass, exposing the trespasser to ejectment and damages. Leasing therefore sits inside, not outside, the disposal controls — every lease must trace back to a lawful managing authority acting within its statutory competence.
Exchange of land: Section 101
A subtler mode of disposal is exchange. Section 101 allows a bhumidhar, with the prior written permission of the Sub-Divisional Officer, to exchange his land with the land of another bhumidhar or with land entrusted or deemed entrusted to a Gram Panchayat or local authority under Section 59. Because an exchange of Gram Panchayat land can be used to launder a prohibited disposal — swapping a cultivator into prime commons and the Panchayat into worthless waste — the section requires the SDO to refuse permission in defined situations: where the exchange is not needed to consolidate or make holdings more convenient, where the values or areas of the two parcels differ excessively, or where the Gram Panchayat land is reserved for a planned public use. Exchange is thus a controlled disposal: the SDO's permission is mandatory and structured, and an exchange involving Section 77 reserved land cannot be sanctioned at all. The interplay with consolidation and survey work — which often throws up the need to rationalise holdings — is taken up in our note on revenue survey and settlement.
Recovery of land: cancellation of allotment and lease under Section 128
The disposal scheme is enforced from the other end by Section 128, "Cancellation of allotment and lease." The Collector may act on his own motion, and shall act on the application of any person aggrieved, where an allotment or lease of Gram Panchayat land has been made in contravention of the Code — for example, to an ineligible person, out of the Section 64 order of preference, without the SDO's approval, or over Section 77 reserved land. An application must ordinarily be filed within five years of the allotment or lease. On cancellation, the right, title and interest of the allottee or lessee cease and the land reverts to the Gram Panchayat; the Collector may direct delivery of possession, using such force as is necessary. Section 128 also contains a tempering provision: in defined circumstances the Collector may, instead of cancelling, direct that the allottee be treated as an asami under Section 125 rather than be ejected outright — a calibrated remedy that protects a deserving occupant while still extinguishing the unlawful bhumidhar grant. The cancellation order is, subject to the appeal and revision provisions of the Code (Section 211 and the powers of the Board of Revenue), final. Cancellation is thus the disposal scheme's self-correcting mechanism — the same authority that supervises disposal can undo a bad disposal.
The constitutional backstop: protection of village commons
Sitting above the Code's text is a body of Supreme Court doctrine that treats village common land as a near-inalienable public trust, and which Indian courts apply to read down any disposal that injures the commons. The leading authority is Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2011) 11 SCC 396, where the Court held that a person in illegal occupation of Gram Sabha or Gram Panchayat land cannot claim regularisation as of right; that State Government orders allotting commons to private persons or commercial enterprises on payment of money are illegal and to be ignored; and that all State Governments must frame schemes to evict encroachers and restore the land to the village. The Court allowed only a narrow exception — regularisation where land had genuinely been allotted to the landless or to Scheduled Castes and Tribes, or was being used for a public purpose such as a school or dispensary — which dovetails precisely with the Section 64 preference. Jagpal Singh builds on Hinch Lal Tiwari v. Kamala Devi, AIR 2001 SC 3215, which protected ponds and tanks as ecological commons, and is reinforced for UP by Babu Singh v. Consolidation Officer, 2026 INSC 395, voiding pattas carved out of pasture and threshing-floor land. The practical lesson for disposal is unambiguous: the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti's power to dispose is a stewardship power bounded by Section 77 and by these decisions, and any disposal that diverts the commons to private gain is void and recoverable under Section 128.
Putting the disposal scheme together
Read as a whole, disposal of government land under the Code runs along a single spine. Land vests in or is entrusted to the Gram Panchayat under Section 59; it is managed by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti under the Sub-Divisional Officer's control under Section 60; it is disposed of by abadi allotment (Sections 63–64), by admission of cultivators as bhumidhars with non-transferable rights (Section 76), by lease (Section 94) or by exchange (Section 101); it can never be disposed of where it falls within the reserved categories of Section 77; and an unlawful disposal is recovered by the Collector under Section 128. Every stage carries the same two safeguards — a managing authority that holds in trust, and a supervising authority that must approve or can cancel — so that disposal serves the village rather than depleting it. The disposal scheme cannot be understood in isolation from the recording machinery, because a disposal not entered in the record of rights or worked through a mutation remains incomplete on the ground, and from the supervisory hierarchy of revenue officers that polices it. For aspirants, the high-yield takeaways are the Section 77 list, the Section 64 order of preference, and the Collector's five-year cancellation window under Section 128, all anchored to Jagpal Singh.
Frequently asked questions
Which authority disposes of Gram Panchayat land under the UP Revenue Code, 2006?
The Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti (Land Management Committee) disposes of land entrusted to the Gram Panchayat under Section 59, but only as manager under Section 60 and subject to the superintendence and control of the Sub-Divisional Officer. Most disposals — abadi allotment, admission of a bhumidhar, lease — require the SDO's previous approval, and the Samiti holds the land in trust for the village, not as owner.
What is the order of preference for allotting abadi (house) sites?
Section 64 lays down a mandatory order: first an agricultural labourer or village artisan resident in the Gram Sabha belonging to a Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or OBC, or a general-category person below the poverty line; then any other resident agricultural labourer or artisan; then any other resident of the reserved categories. Within a class, a person with no or insufficient housing is preferred, and ties are decided by drawing lots. Ignoring this order makes the allotment liable to cancellation.
Which lands can never be allotted or disposed of as bhumidhar land?
Section 77 freezes out threshing floors (khaliyan), manure pits, pasture land, burial and cremation grounds, land under water used for growing singhara, river-bed land in casual cultivation, notified shifting cultivation, taungya plantation land, grove land entrusted under Section 59, and sullage farms or trenching grounds. An allotment of such land is void, as held for ponds in Hinch Lal Tiwari v. Kamala Devi, AIR 2001 SC 3215, and for pasture and threshing-floor land in Babu Singh v. Consolidation Officer, 2026 INSC 395.
Can common village land be regularised in favour of an encroacher?
Generally no. In Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2011) 11 SCC 396, the Supreme Court held that a person in illegal occupation of Gram Sabha or Gram Panchayat land cannot claim regularisation as of right and directed eviction of encroachers. The only narrow exception is land genuinely allotted to the landless or to SC/ST beneficiaries, or used for a public purpose such as a school or dispensary — which aligns with the Section 64 preference.
How long can government or Gram Panchayat land be leased?
Under Section 94 a bhumidhar may lease for agricultural purposes for up to fifteen years at a time (renewable by mutual consent) and for a solar energy plant for up to thirty years. The cap prevents a perpetual lease operating as a disguised transfer. Gram Panchayat land is leased by the Bhumi Prabandhak Samiti within the Section 60 management and Section 64 preference framework, and reserved Section 77 land cannot be leased at all.
When and how can an allotment or lease of government land be cancelled?
Under Section 128 the Collector may, on his own motion or on the application of any aggrieved person (ordinarily within five years), cancel an allotment or lease made in contravention of the Code. On cancellation the allottee's rights cease, the land reverts to the Gram Panchayat, and the Collector may order delivery of possession using necessary force. In defined cases the Collector may instead treat the occupant as an asami under Section 125 rather than ejecting him, subject to appeal and revision under Section 211.