Encroachment is the silent disease of village land. A boundary creeps a few feet, a cattle-shed rises on the chak road, a shop swallows part of the pond bank, and within a generation the common land of the village has been quietly privatised. The UP Revenue Code, 2006 answers this with a graded eviction machinery: summary administrative ejectment for gram sabha and public land under Sections 67 and 136, a regular suit for private holdings under Section 134, and severe judicial hostility to any attempt to regularise the trespass. This note maps every eviction route, the officer who exercises it, the damages payable, and the leading case law that governs how the power must be used.
What counts as an encroachment under the Code
An encroachment, in revenue law, is the taking or retaining of possession of land otherwise than in accordance with law and without the consent of the person or authority entitled to it. The Code does not use a single defined term; instead it distinguishes by whose land is encroached. Where the land forms part of a private holding of a bhumidhar or asami, the intruder is dealt with under Section 134. Where the land vests in or is entrusted to the gram sabha or another local authority — ponds, pasture, khalihan, abadi, threshing floors, paths, and unallotted government land — the encroacher is dealt with administratively under Sections 67 and 136. The unifying idea is that lawful possession flows only from title or a lawful grant; mere physical occupation, however long, confers nothing where the land is public.
This classification matters because it decides the forum. Private encroachment is litigated as a suit before the revenue court; public encroachment is removed by an executive order of a revenue officer, subject to a hearing. Understanding the hierarchy of revenue officers is therefore essential before identifying which eviction provision applies.
Section 67: summary protection of gram sabha property
Section 67 is the workhorse provision for protecting gram sabha (formerly gram panchayat) property. It empowers the Assistant Collector to act where any person damages, misappropriates, or wrongfully occupies property entrusted to the gram sabha. On receiving information — typically a report from the Land Management Committee in Form RC-19 — the Assistant Collector issues a show-cause notice in Form RC-20 calling on the occupant to explain why compensation for the damage, misappropriation or wrongful occupation, not exceeding the amount specified, should not be recovered and why he should not be evicted.
If, after considering the reply, the officer is satisfied that the occupation is wrongful, he may order eviction, recover compensation as arrears of land revenue, and direct that any improvement or crop be forfeited or removed. The power expressly extends to using such force as is necessary to effect the eviction. The 2016 amendment (UP Act 4 of 2016) substituted “Gram Panchayat” with “Gram Sabha” throughout, so current orders are passed in the name of the gram sabha. The provision sits within the Code's broader scheme for land vested in the gram sabha following the survey and settlement of village land.
The summary nature of Section 67 proceedings
The Allahabad High Court has repeatedly held that proceedings under Section 67 are summary in character and are to be decided primarily on affidavits, in the manner of a summary trial under Section 225-A of the Code rather than a full-dress evidentiary suit. The Assistant Collector files his material on affidavit; the noticee files his reply on affidavit; the officer may permit cross-examination of a deponent, and must record a finding that the reply is insufficient before ordering eviction. This is not a licence to dispense with fairness — it is a calibrated, faster procedure suited to clearing public land of obvious trespass.
In Rishipal Singh v. State of U.P., the Allahabad High Court laid down structured guidelines for conducting Section 67 proceedings — verification of the encroachment report, proper service of the RC-20 notice, genuine opportunity to reply, and a reasoned finding before eviction. Later benches have clarified that these guidelines operate as a model to be formally adopted by the State through rule amendment; until adopted, they are directory guidance rather than a mandatory code, so an order is not void merely because every step in Rishipal Singh was not mechanically reproduced. The governing test remains substantive fairness: a real notice, a real hearing, and a reasoned order.
Section 136: ejectment of trespassers from gram sabha land
Section 136 is the dedicated ejectment provision for trespassers on land entrusted to the gram sabha or another local authority. The Sub-Divisional Officer may act of his own motion or on the application of the gram sabha or local authority to eject any person who takes or retains possession of such land in contravention of the Code and without consent. The categories of land covered in sub-section (2) include land entrusted to or held by the gram sabha, land which the authority is entitled to possess, and land where lawful cultivation has become impossible.
The ejected person is liable to pay damages at the prescribed rates, and the definition of “land” here expressly includes trees and other improvements standing on it — so the encroacher cannot bargain for the value of what he built without authority. Sub-section (3) is the safeguard: no person may be evicted under this section unless adequate opportunity to show cause has been afforded. As under Section 67, the officer may use or cause to be used such force as is necessary. Section 136 thus complements Section 67, with the SDO as the ejecting authority for trespass simpliciter and the Assistant Collector under Section 67 where damage or misappropriation is also alleged.
Section 134: ejectment from private holdings
Where the encroached land forms part of the holding of a bhumidhar or asami, Section 134 applies. A person who takes or retains possession otherwise than in accordance with law, and without the consent of the tenure-holder, is liable to ejectment on the suit of the bhumidhar or asami concerned, and is liable to pay damages at the prescribed rate. Unlike Sections 67 and 136, this is not a suo-motu administrative power — it is a remedy the aggrieved private tenure-holder must invoke by instituting a suit before the competent revenue court.
Sub-section (2) makes the State Government and the gram sabha necessary parties to every such suit, reflecting the State's residuary interest in agricultural land under the Code's tenure scheme. The classification of the plaintiff as bhumidhar with transferable rights, bhumidhar with non-transferable rights, or asami — explained in the note on land tenures — determines the bundle of rights he is protecting, but all three may sue under Section 134 against a trespasser on their holding.
Damages, injunctions and ancillary remedies
Eviction is rarely the only relief. Across Sections 67, 134 and 136 the trespasser is liable to damages at rates prescribed by the U.P. Revenue Code Rules, 2016, calculated for the period of wrongful occupation and recoverable, in the case of gram sabha land, as arrears of land revenue. Section 133 supplements this by allowing a suit for injunction, compensation and other ancillary relief where a person is threatened with dispossession or injury to his holding, giving the lawful holder a forward-looking remedy rather than merely a remedy after the trespass is complete.
The Code also protects boundary marks: Section 227 makes a person who destroys or damages a survey or boundary mark liable to damages, since the obliteration of boundaries is often the first step in encroachment. Damages serve a dual purpose — they restore the public exchequer or the tenure-holder, and they remove the financial incentive to occupy first and litigate later.
Jagpal Singh: encroachments on common land cannot be regularised
The constitutional centre of gravity for village-land encroachment is the Supreme Court's decision in Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2011) 11 SCC 396. The Court was confronted with long-standing encroachments, including pucca construction, on a village pond and gram panchayat land. It held that the encroachers were trespassers with no right whatsoever, that the existence of substantial construction is no answer to eviction, and — most importantly — that schemes and executive letters permitting regularisation of such occupation are illegal and without jurisdiction.
The Court directed all State Governments to prepare schemes for the eviction of illegal encroachers from gram sabha and gram panchayat land and to restore that land to common village use, treating regularisation as the exception confined to genuinely landless persons or established public institutions, not a reward for organised land-grabbing. Jagpal Singh is routinely cited by the Allahabad High Court when sustaining Section 67 and Section 136 evictions, and it forecloses the most common defence raised by encroachers — that they have invested in the land and should be allowed to keep it on payment.
No adverse possession against the State or gram sabha
Encroachers frequently plead long, uninterrupted possession as ripening into adverse possession. The Code's scheme, reinforced by the Supreme Court, defeats this. In State of Haryana v. Mukesh Kumar, (2011) 10 SCC 404 (AIR 2012 SC 559), the Court held that the doctrine of adverse possession sits uneasily with the constitutional right to property and cannot be wielded by the State to grab a citizen's land; the corollary, applied in revenue practice, is that the limitation-based extinguishment of title does not assist a trespasser against public land which the gram sabha holds for the common benefit of the villagers.
For gram sabha land, the answer is more direct: such land is held in trust for the village, it is not freely transferable, and the summary powers under Sections 67 and 136 are not subject to the ordinary limitation that bars a stale civil suit. A claim that “I have been here for twenty years” therefore goes to the strength of the encroachment, not to any right — the recent Allahabad decisions sustaining eviction of decades-old occupations of khalihan and pond land confirm that the passage of time hardens the State's duty to evict rather than the occupant's claim to stay.
Procedure, forms and the officers who act
The operative flow on the ground is set by the U.P. Revenue Code Rules, 2016. The Land Management Committee or Lekhpal reports the encroachment, typically in Form RC-19, identifying the gata number, area and the recorded class of land. The competent officer — the Assistant Collector under Section 67 or the Sub-Divisional Officer under Section 136 — issues the show-cause notice in Form RC-20. The reply is considered on affidavit, a finding is recorded, and an eviction order issues, after which possession is restored to the gram sabha, if necessary by force.
The choice of officer tracks the source of power, and the designations and powers of revenue officers — Collector, SDO, Assistant Collector, Tehsildar — must be read together with these provisions. Where the encroachment is reflected in the village record, correction of the entry through mutation or through the record of rights often runs parallel to the eviction, because an encroacher will frequently have engineered a wrongful entry to support his possession.
Appeals, revision and the bar on civil courts
An order of eviction and damages under the Code is not final at the first tier. An order passed under Section 67 by the Assistant Collector is appealable to the Collector, and the Code's general appellate and revisional structure allows further challenge to the Commissioner and the Board of Revenue, with the High Court available under Article 226 for jurisdictional error or breach of natural justice. The recurring ground for interference is procedural — absence of a proper RC-20 notice, no genuine opportunity to reply, or eviction of a person not actually shown to be the encroacher, as in the recent mosque-on-khalihan case where the eviction was upheld but the monetary penalty on mere worshippers was quashed for want of any link to the encroachment.
Crucially, the Code bars the civil court's jurisdiction over matters it commits to the revenue authorities; a person aggrieved by an eviction must pursue the statutory remedies, not file a civil suit. This exclusivity is what makes the summary machinery effective — it prevents an encroacher from parking the public land in years of parallel civil litigation. For the architecture of the Code that creates these tiers, see the UP Revenue Code hub and the introductory overview.
Exam pointers and common traps
For judiciary and CLAT-PG candidates, the high-yield distinctions are these. First, match the provision to the land: Section 134 (suit, private holding), Section 136 (SDO, ejectment of gram sabha trespasser), Section 67 (Assistant Collector, damage or misappropriation of gram sabha property), Section 151 (trespass on land of a government lessee). Second, remember that Section 67 and Section 136 are summary and suo-motu, whereas Section 134 requires a suit by the tenure-holder with the State and gram sabha as necessary parties.
Third, the two case anchors are Jagpal Singh (no regularisation of encroachment on common land; States to evict) and State of Haryana v. Mukesh Kumar (hostility to adverse possession, especially against citizens). Fourth, note the safeguards — the RC-20 show-cause notice, the affidavit procedure under Section 225-A, and the Rishipal Singh guidelines — and that damages and use of force are statutory incidents of the eviction, not separate proceedings. Anchoring each rule to its section number and its officer is what separates a full-mark answer from a vague one.
Frequently asked questions
Which provision is used to evict an encroacher from gram sabha land in UP?
Two work together. Section 136 empowers the Sub-Divisional Officer to eject a trespasser of gram sabha or local-authority land, suo motu or on the authority's application. Section 67 empowers the Assistant Collector to act where there is also damage, misappropriation or wrongful occupation of gram sabha property, ordering eviction and recovery of compensation. Both are summary and both require a show-cause hearing.
Can long possession of gram sabha land create a right by adverse possession?
No. Gram sabha land is held in trust for the village and the summary eviction powers are not defeated by lapse of time. State of Haryana v. Mukesh Kumar, (2011) 10 SCC 404, treats adverse possession with hostility, and Allahabad High Court routinely upholds eviction of decades-old encroachments. Long possession strengthens the State's duty to evict, not the encroacher's claim to stay.
What did Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab decide about encroachments?
In Jagpal Singh v. State of Punjab, (2011) 11 SCC 396, the Supreme Court held that encroachers on village common land and ponds are trespassers with no right, that substantial construction is no defence, and that executive schemes regularising such occupation are illegal. It directed all States to evict illegal encroachers from gram sabha and gram panchayat land and restore it to common use.
How is Section 134 different from Sections 67 and 136?
Section 134 protects a private holding of a bhumidhar or asami and is enforced by a suit filed by the tenure-holder, with the State and gram sabha as necessary parties. Sections 67 and 136 protect gram sabha or public land and are exercised administratively, suo motu, by the Assistant Collector and the Sub-Divisional Officer respectively. The distinction is private suit versus administrative ejectment.
Is a hearing required before eviction under the Revenue Code?
Yes. Section 136(3) bars eviction unless adequate opportunity to show cause is afforded, and Section 67 proceedings require a notice in Form RC-20, consideration of the reply on affidavit, and a recorded finding of insufficiency before eviction. Rishipal Singh v. State of U.P. structured these safeguards; later benches treat them as directory guidance subject to overriding substantive fairness.
What damages can be recovered from an encroacher?
Damages at the rates prescribed under the U.P. Revenue Code Rules, 2016, for the period of wrongful occupation. For gram sabha land they are recoverable as arrears of land revenue. Section 133 allows a suit for injunction and compensation, and Section 227 imposes damages for destroying boundary marks. The definition of land in Section 136 includes trees and improvements, so an encroacher cannot claim their value.