Adverse Possession can be described as: when any unknown or a trespasser, who gets the sole and continuous possession of the property and also during his possession, there should not be any interruption for a specific time period basically of 12 years to 30 years continuous years because it depends on the type of the property the possession is being done i.e., government or private of land. The owner of the property had been given sufficient time in order to protect his land from the adverse claimer possession by the statute of limitations.
The owner of the land will be bound to lose his land if he does not interrupt to the trespasser on his land. Under the statute of Limitation Act, 1963, in its Article 65 the law of adverse possession is clearly mentioned where a time period of 12 years has been mentioned as the limitation if the owner of the property wishes to claim his right in the immovable property. The most important piece of the legislation which is defining the concept of adverse possession is the Limitation Act, 1963 which is giving provisions of such type of possession.
The Court cannot take any cognizance if limitation is barring the suit, it is mentioned under Section 3 of the statute of Limitation Act, it does not amount to anything if after limitation the defendant has taken any defence or not. It is very important to note that under the given provision it is clearly mentioned that the person only loses his remedy but the right which is available to the person filing under the law. If the owner of the property does not file the claim in the time period given i.e., 12 years then he will lose his right permanently and hence lose his right of ownership permanently from the immovable property.
This would result in that someone needs to now become the new owner of the immovable property because the rightful owner now has lost his rights the time, he had failed to take any action as per the Section 27 of the statute of Limitation. Now, under the Article 65 of the Limitations Act, the person who is in the adverse possession can become the absolute owner of the property with respect to that article. The most important thing to be noted here is that the limitation period of 12 years only starts when the owner of the property gets to know about the adverse possession by some stranger or the trespasser.
There are 5 conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for a person to claim the adverse possession.
- Actual possession of the property
- such possession should be open and notorious to the use of the property
- Exclusive possession and use of the property (No one else should be claiming the possession other than person who is applying for its possession)
- such possession should be hostile or adverse to the true owner
- such possession should be a continuous one without any interruption:
If any person is claiming adverse possession on an immovable property, then the above-mentioned points must be satisfied.
In the case of Ravinder Kaur Grewal v/s Manjit Kaur on 7 August, 2019, it was one of the landmark judgements where the Supreme Court decided the case based on Section 65 of the Limitation Act where it was held that the basic condition in order to prove the adverse possession is whether the time limit of 12 years is fulfilling or it is not. In this case the appellants in the family settlement were residing in the home for more than 12 years and the court said that the owner had lost their rights of claiming the possession so the new title of possession was decided in the favour of appellant and the supreme court had uphold the family settlement.
Proof and Pleadings
It is very important to take into consideration and note that is required to do and what not when it is to claim the title through the adverse possession. In the case of the Karnataka Waqf Board which was reported in year 2004 (10) SCC 779, the Supreme Court of India said that: “Plea of adverse possession is not a pure question of law but a blended one of fact and law”
This is the reason why the person who is claiming the adverse possession of the immovable property should show the record of the following things.: (a) on what date he came into possession, (b) what was the nature of his possession (c) whether the factum of possession was known to the other party, (d) how long his possession has continued, and (e) his possession was open and undisturbed.
The law of adverse possession should be reformed because it violates the principle of equity. It has been seen under several cases that where the owners of the immovable property have lost their right of property because they couldn’t claim it in given time and there are several reasonable reasons that why the owners were not able to claim their right like poverty, there lack of knowledge and now because of this law many innocent people have to lose their land.