In this civil appeal, the Supreme Court examined the validity of a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment that had exercised its second appellate jurisdiction under Section 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, to reverse concurrent judgments and decrees of the trial court and the first appellate court. The dispute concerned co-ownership and partition of ancestral agricultural land measuring approximately 12.41 acres in Village Kanadia, Indore. The Supreme Court allowed the appeal, set aside the High Court’s judgment, and restored the concurrent decrees of the lower courts in favor of the appellants. The Court ruled that the High Court had severely overstepped the bounds of Section 100 by reappreciating evidence to overturn concurrent findings of fact without establishing any demonstrable perversity, reiterating that unverified revenue mutation entries and vague, unproven relinquishment documents cannot legally extinguish an inherited title to immovable property.
- Restricted Scope of Second Appeal: The High Court cannot interfere with concurrent findings of fact under Section 100 of the CPC merely because a different view or inference from the evidence is preferred; interference is permissible only in the face of demonstrable perversity, legal error, or reliance on inadmissible material.
- Revenue Entries Do Not Convey Title: Entries in revenue records exist strictly for fiscal and administrative purposes; they neither create nor extinguish proprietary title, nor can a revenue mutation order operate as a valid conveyance or surrender of property rights.
- Burden of Proving Relinquishment: The onus rests squarely on the party asserting that a co-owner voluntarily relinquished their property interest to prove the underlying transaction through clear and independent evidence, which cannot be satisfied by vague, unregistered documents or unverified statements.
- Limitation and Co-Ownership: Possession by one co-owner is legally on behalf of all co-owners, and limitation for a title declaration and partition suit does not begin merely from the date of a clandestine revenue mutation unless an open, hostile ouster to the knowledge of the other co-owner is established.
- Section 34 of the Specific Relief Act: A suit seeking a declaration of title by succession along with consequential reliefs like partition and possession does not violate the proviso to Section 34 simply because a separate prayer to cancel a collateral revenue mutation entry was omitted.
