Digest of Supreme Court on Property Laws (2017 to 2024)

Property in legal sense means an aggregate of rights which are guaranteed and protected by law. It extends to every species of valuable right and interest, more particularly, ownership and exclusive right to a thing, the right to dispose of the thing in every legal way, to possess it, to use it and to exclude everyone else from interfering with it. The dominion or indefinite right of use or disposition which one may lawfully exercise over particular things or subjects is called property. The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing is property in legal parameters. Therefore, the word "property" connotes everything which is subject of ownership, corporeal or incorporeal, tangible or intangible, visible or invisible, real or personal; everything that has an exchangeable value or which goes to make up wealth or estate or status. Property, therefore, within the constitutional protection, denotes group of rights inhering citizen's relation to physical thing, as right to possess, use and dispose of it in accordance with law.!. The word "property" which is designed to protect private property in all its forms, must be understood both in a corporeal sense as having reference to all those specific things that are susceptible of private appropriation and enjoyment as well as in its juridical or legal sense of a bundle of rights which the owner can exercise under the municipal law with respect to the user and enjoyment of those things to the exclusion of all others as held in State of W.B. v. Subodh Gopal Bose, AIR 1954 SC 92: 1954 SCR 587.

Also, "Property is any protected right or bundle of rights (interest or thing) with direct or indirect regard to any external object (i.e. other than the person himself) which is material or quasi-material (i.e. a protected process) and which the then and there organization of society permits to be either private or public, which is connoted by the legal concepts of occupying, possessing or using.", as held by Supreme Court Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, AIR 1967 SC 1643, 1709: (1967) 2 SCR 762.

Key Highlights:

• A strong attempt has been made to bring forth every case law of Supreme Court which touches property, like:
  • Possession,
  • Dispossession,
  • Title,
  • Ownership,
  • Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988,
  • Specific Performance of Contract,
  • Co-Owner, Joint Owner,
  • Bonafide Purchaser,
  • Grants,
  • Government Grants
  • Lessor,
  • Lessee,
  • Tenancy,
    and many more.
• Entire data is divided into chapters for easy reference and chapter-wise separate synopsis is given for ready reference.
• Cover cases of Supreme Court on Property Law from 2017 till January 2024.