Orders by authorized officers must be reasoned and based on a proper assessment of land status; failure to comply can lead to disciplinary action and costs awarded to the aggrieved party.

1. Nowadays, the routine duty of this Court is to set aside stereotypical orders passed by authorised officers in Form 5 applications filed by land owners in accordance with the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Rules, 2008. (‘Rules 2008’ for brevity) When Form-5 applications are filed before the authorised officers, 90% of them are disposed of with the same set of sentences without application of mind by the authorised officers. This Court, in several judgments, directed the authorised officers to pass a speaking order after adverting to the contentions of the respective parties. But, even if there are several such directions from this Court, the orders are passed without considering those judgments. Similar types of orders are passed by almost all the authorised officers in the state. This Court even apprehends that the authorised officers are passing orders based on a standard order drafted by them, which is circulated among themselves! Since this Court must interfere with these orders for the same reason that they are not a speaking order, the judgments of this Court are also stereotypical. If statistics are examined regarding the writ petitions that set aside orders passed in Form-5 applications, it can be seen that this Court is often compelled to pass stereotypical judgments. No purpose will be served in directing the authorised officers to pass a speaking order is the present situation. In Malayalam, there is a story of a nephew and his uncle. The uncle used to beat the nephew to see that he would become a good boy. But there was no change in him. At last, the nephew told the uncle like this: (“Don’t beat me uncle, I will never change,”). But this court cannot take it in that manner as far as authorised officers are concerned. This Court cannot ignore this type of attitude from authorised officers, and this Court knows how to deal with such attitudes from them. Authorised officers are not laymen, but they are senior officers of the state service. The present case is the best example in which an authorised officer not only issued a stereotype order originally in a Form-5 application, but even after this Court set aside the same and directed reconsideration, the same order was repeated without any change, including the modulation of the sentences.