N T BOPANNA S/O LATE N N THIMMAIAH KONGANA Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE VIDHANA SOUDHA BANGALORE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner herein, serving as a Soldier in the Indian Army, has come up in this writ petition seeking a writ of mandamus to direct the 2nd respondent - Deputy Commissioner, Kodagu District to consider his application dated 10.06.2015 for grant of 10 Acres of land in Sy. No.162 of Kongana Village, B Shettigeri Post, Virajpet Taluk, Kodagu District and any other relief this Court may consider fit.

(2.) Admittedly, the procedure for grant of land either to serving army personnel or ex-servicemen is governed by Rules 3, 4 and 5 of the Karnataka Land Grant Rules, 1969. Rule 3 provides the procedure for determining the lands available for reservation / disposal in any village. Rule 4 is with regard to grant of available land for agricultural purposes to different category of persons. As per the said Rules, reservation for grant of land in any Village to Ex-servicemen and Soldiers can be considered only after the land is identified as available for grant and the same is notified as per Rule 3. Even after identifying and publishing such lists as the land available for grant, only 10% out of that land could be reserved for grant either for serving army personnel or ex-servicemen, in terms of Rule 5.

(3.) In this regard, further it is noted that when several writ petitions filed by soldiers and ex-servicemen of Indian Army seeking grant of land were pending before this Court, a Co-ordinate Bench disposed of a series of writ petitions by passing a detailed Order on 25.08.2014 in W.P. No.26700/2013 connected with other batch of writ petitions, where guidelines are fixed so that the applications for grant could be considered. The guidelines are in the form of direction Nos.1 to 13 in the said Order.