Devan Ramachandran, J.

When the hearing commenced in this appeal, we were under the impression that the primary issue herein involves a question as to whether the owner of a property, which is brought to sale under the provisions of Revenue Recovery Act ('the Act' for brevity) and bid on behalf of the Government, thus treating it as bought-in-land, can seek reconveyance of the same once the liability, against which revenue recovery action had been initiated, has been paid off subsequently either in full or under the terms of an Amnesty Scheme. The answer to this particular question is of course no longer res integra and is covered by several judgments of this Court, including State of Kerala and Others v. George Jacob (2010 (3) KLT 483), Laxmi Devi Tile Works v. District Collector, Thrissur (2009 (2) KLT 587 and Sibi Francis v. State of Kerala (2013 (2) KLT SN 82).

2. We notice that the learned Single Judge also proceeded to deal with the writ petition as if the only issue involved is as regards the re-conveyance of a bought-in-land and going by the settled principles of law, as enunciated in the above said judgments, went on to conclude in paragraph 7 as under:

“Taking into consideration the aforesaid factual situation, there cannot be any situation where permission should be granted to re-convey the land merely for the reason that the amount has been subsequently remitted by the petitioner under the Amnesty Scheme. Hence I do not find any merit in the writ petition.”

3. In this appeal filed impugning the judgment of the learned Single Judge, a completely different question of law has been impelled based on the particular factual situation in this case. When we heard the matter, it became more or less apparent that the singular factual circumstances in this case would warrant consideration of issues relating to restitution of property rather than re-conveyance of the bought-in-land by the Government.

4. This will become apparent when the facts involved in this case are seen with some care.

5. We will, therefore, first state the most necessary facts.

6. The appellant/writ petitioner claims to have been the owner of certain extents of land comprised of in Sy.Nos. 695/1, 561/2, 560/9 and 550/17 in Block 49 of Pattancherry Village. According to him, he was a rice and paddy dealer and concedes that he had suffered an assessment order issued by the Commercial Tax Officer under the General Sales Tax Act for the years 1995-96 and 1996-97 for an amount of Rs.64,74,883/-. Since, as per him, the assessment was without basis, he filed statutory appeals against it, which were numbered as S.T.A.Nos.1975/2005 and 1976/2005 before the Deputy Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, Ernakulam. The records reveal that these appeals were dismissed, aggrieved by which the appellant submitted further appeals, numbered as T.A.Nos.501/2006 and 502/2006 before the Kerala Agricultural Income Tax and Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal, Additional Bench, Palakkad ('the Tribunal' for brevity).

7. It transpires that while the appeals were pending before the learned Tribunal, the Commercial Tax Officer, Chittur made a requisition under the provisions of the Act for recovery of the amounts found due under the assessment against the appellant. This led to demand notices under Sections 7 and 34 of the Act to be issued to the appellant and since he did not remit the alleged dues covered by those notices, his property, measuring 1.5320 hectares, comprised of in the survey numbers aforementioned, was proclaimed for auction. We see from the orders on record that when the sale was initially scheduled to be held on 20.07.2006, the appellant approached this Court by filing W.P.(C)No.18805/2006 and that this Court granted an interim order staying the sale of the property on condition that he pays Rs.5,00,000/-within a period of two weeks. However, since the appellant did not comply with the interim direction, the authorities scheduled the sale to be conducted on 23.08.2006, whic