The court directs reconsideration of an application for land conversion, emphasizing the need to correct erroneous entries in land records as per established legal principles.

JUDGMENT

This writ petition is filed with following prayers:

i. a writ of certiorari or any other appropriate writ order or direction to call for the records leading to Ext. P6 & P7 orders and quash the same.

ii. a writ of mandamus or any other appropriate writ order or direction to respondents to allow application submitted by the petitioner under Form 6 of the Act, 2008. OR A writ of mandamus or any other appropriate writ order or direction to the first & second respondents to reconsider application submitted by the petitioner under Form No.6 of the paddy land and wet land Act, 2008 on the basis of the Data Bank, building permit and report of KSREC and satellite picture of the property and afford an opportunity of hearing to the petitioner within a reasonable time.

iii. such other relief’s as this Hon’ble Court deems fit to grant in the nature of this case.

iv. a direction to dispense with filing of the translation of vernacular document produced with this writ petition. (SIC)

2. Petitioner purchased 4.41 Ares of land comprised in Survey No.14/7 in Vadakkangara Village, Perinthalmanna Taluk, for the sole purpose to construct a house is the submission. According to the petitioner, the above said land is not included in the data bank and not a notified land under the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008 . It is submitted that Makkaraparamba Grama Panchayath granted Ext.P3 building permit dated 09.04.2021 to construct a residential building. Thereafter, since the description of land in BTR is Nilam, the petitioner submitted Form-6 application for conversion of land in accordance with the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Rules, 2008. The Village Officer has recommended for conversion and subsequently corrected his report is the submission. The 3^rd respondent Agriculture O has admitted that the above property is not included in the data bank is the further submission. As per the Ext.P5 report from the KSREC, the above land is a fallow land and there is no paddy cultivation in the year 2006 and thereafter is the contention of the petitioner. But the 2^nd respondent rejected application mainly for the reason that the property of the petitioner is included in the data bank. An appeal was filed against the same and the appellate authority also confirmed that order. Aggrieved by the same, this writ petition is filed.

3. Heard the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned Government Pleader.

4. This Court perused Ext.P2 data bank. As per Serial No.54 in the remarks column No.13 of Ext.P2, Survey No.14/7 of in Vadakkangara Village is shown as “building - converted for more than one year”, and in Column No.12, it is stated that the conversion is two years back. If that is the case, the dictum laid down in Line Properties Pvt. Ltd. v. Revenue Divisional Officer, Ernakulam [2025 KHC 1637] is applicable. The relevant portion of the above judgment is extracted hereunder:

“7. Apart from the above, as rightly pointed out by the learned Counsel for the petitioner, Ext.P3 notification of the Data Bank itself is not in the format as described in Form 4 of the Paddy Land Rules. The learned Counsel for the petitioner points out that, in Basil v. Local Level Monitoring Committee (2024 (1) KHC 28) and Anu Mathew v Revenue Divisional Officer (2022 (6) KLT 93) , directions were issued by this Court to remove such erroneous entry even without insisting for Form 5 application, under similar circumstances. Further, in W.A. No.211/2017 , a Division Bench of this Court made certain observations to the effect that, in cases where the property is included in the Data Bank as "converted land", it would only mean that, the conversion of the property took place prior to the coming into forc