Kerala High Court slams revenue officials for copy-paste orders on paddy land conversion applications

The Kerala High Court recently criticised Revenue Divisional Officers across the State for issuing stereotypical, non-speaking, and identically phrased orders without any application of mind while dealing with applications to change the categorisation of land from 'paddy land' [Vinumon vs The District Collector & ors].

Such paddy land conversion applications are generally referred to as Form 5 applications. These are filed under Rule 4(d) of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Rules, 2008, which allows landowners to seek removal of their property from the State's paddy land data bank.

Justice PV Kunhikrishnan, however, recently observed that almost 90 per cent of the orders passed by the authorised officers in such matters were identically-phrased and devoid of any application of mind.

"Nowadays, the routine duty of this Court is to set aside stereotypical orders passed by authorised officers ... 90% of them are disposed of with the same set of sentences without application of mind by the authorised officers," the judge lamented.

The Court flagged concern that such officers may even be passing such orders based on a standardised template circulated among themselves.

"This Court even apprehends that the authorised officers are passing orders based on a standard order drafted by them, which is circulated among themselves!" it said.

The Court also noted that it has been issuing repeated directions to the concerned officers to issue proper speaking orders to little avail. It likened the conduct of such officers to that of an incorrigible child.

"In Malayalam, there is a story of a nephew and his uncle. The uncle used to beat the nephew to see that he would become a good boy. But there was no change in him. At last, the nephew told the uncle like this: 'എന്നെ തല്ലേണ്ടമ്മാവാ, ഞാൻ നന്നാവില്ല ' (Don’t beat me uncle, I will never change). But this court cannot take it in that manner as far as authorised officers are concerned," the Court said.

The Court has now warned the officers that such an attitude will not be tolerated.

"This Court cannot ignore this type of attitude from authorised officers, and this Court knows how to deal with such attitudes from them. Authorised officers are not laymen, but they are senior officers of the state service," it said.

The Court added that any officer found carelessly issuing unreasoned orders on Form 5 applications will be ordered to pay costs.

"The authorised officers should not be allowed to issue such cryptic orders in the future ... In future, if an order passed in a Form-5 application is not a speaking order, this Court will be forced to direct the Officer concerned to pay costs to the litigant for unnecessarily approaching this Court again and again," the November 5 ruling said.

The Court made the observation while dealing with a plea by one Vinumon (petitioner), who had filed a Form 5 application to remove his land from the State's paddy land data bank.

The petitioner claimed that his property was erroneously classified as paddy land by the Local Level Monitoring Committee (LLMC).

After his Form 5 application was rejected, he moved the High Court for relief in 2024. The Court, in turn, directed the concerned authorities to reconsider the petitioner's Form 5 application.

However, the authorised officer Sreejith S, who is currently serving as the Deputy Collector (General), Kottayam, again rejected the petitioner's claim by passing an order that was more or less identical to the previous one.

Aggrieved, the petitioner approached the High Court again for relief.

The Court observed that officers often blindly accepted reports of the Agricultural or Village Officers without independently assessing whether the land should be classified as paddy land.

The Court was also not satisfied with an explanation submitted by the concerned officer, Sreejith, as to why he rejected the petitioner's paddy land conversion request.

In an affidavit, the officer had submitted that he had signed an order that was pre-drafted by a junior superintendent as he was short on time, between post-election duties and the Court's directive to reconsider the matter in a time-bound manner.

The Court remarked that the officer could have simply requested an extension of time instead of blindly signing orders prepared by subordinates.

It proceeded to direct the officer to pay ₹10,000 as costs to the petitioner for his (the officer's) carelessness.

"This is only to strengthen the trust of litigants in the system. No citizen should knock on the doors of the court because of this type of careless attitude from the public servant," Justice Kunhikrishnan said, before directing that this judgment be circulated to all authorised officers.

The Court allowed the petition and set aside the order under challenge.

It directed the concerned officer to reconsider the Form-5 application of the petitioner within two weeks.

It also referred the matter to the concerned Disciplinary Authority to examine any possible dereliction of duty on the part of the concerned officer.

Advocate VA Johnson (Varikkappallil) VA represented the petitioner.

Government pleader S Renjith appeared for the State.

[Read Judgment]