The Madras High Court has restrained the Cuddalore district administration from evicting farmers who have been occupying a large extent of government land and carrying out agricultural operations there for a long time, until the Revenue Secretary disposes of their statutory revision plea under the Tamil Nadu Land Encroachment Act, 1905.

Third Division Bench of Justices M. Sundar and Hemant Chandangoudar recorded the submission of Addtiional Advocate General J. Ravindran that the revision plea shall be disposed of within 20 days and ordered that coercive action, if any, would be subject to the orders to be passed in the statutory revision.

Further, stating that the orders to be passed by the Revenue Secretary in the revision plea must be served on the farmers within five working days, the Bench ordained that even those orders, if they were in favour of eviction, must be kept in abeyance for 10 days in order to enable the farmers to seek judicial review.

“We make it clear that we are not expressing any view or opinion on the pending revisions and the same shall be decided by R1 (Revenue Secretary) on their own merits and in accordance with law untrammeled by this order,” the Bench led by Justice Sundar said. The orders were passed on a writ petition filed jointly by 22 farmers.

Their counsel R. Thirumoorthy told the court that the petitioners had been in occupation of the lands, classified as Tharisu (waste lands) in the revenue records, at Malayadikuppam, Kodukanpalayam, and Pethankuppam villages for several decades and had been cultivating cashew, plantain, coconut, palm, sugarcane, and jasmine.

Their plea for grant of patta (land ownership document) had been pending with the district administration for several years. In December 2024, the Cuddalore Tahsildar had taken steps to evict the petitioners by pasting a notice under Section 7 of the Land Encroachment Act at the Vellakarai Village Administrative Officer’s office.

Immediately, the petitioners preferred an appeal before the Collector under Section 10 of the Act and approached the High Court against coercive action. On February 5, 2025, a Bench comprising Justices Sundar and K. Govindarajan Thilakavadi stayed the eviction proceedings until the disposal of the statutory appeal.

Stating that the Collector had rejected the statutory appeal on June 6, 2025, Mr. Thirumoorthy said, again the government officials had begun to evict the petitioners, with the assistance of a huge posse of police personnel, despite a statutory revision plea having been filed before the Revenue Secretary on June 24, 2025.