Bengaluru: In a setback for the state govt and Namma Whitefield RWA Federation Trust, a division bench of Karnataka high court has dismissed their writ appeal over certain parcels of land at Pattanduru Agrahara, KR Pura, which they claimed were part of a tank bed.On Nov 19, 2025, a single bench dismissed a petition filed by the govt in which the trust had impleaded itself, supporting the petition.In 2018, the govt challenged a 1980 order of the Bengaluru South taluk land tribunal in favour of KB Munivenkatappa and his family members, citing that the issue was beyond its jurisdiction.The division bench, comprising Justices DK Singh and H Shanthi Bhushan, noted that the govt, which was given liberty by an appellate court to challenge the order in Dec 2008, took nine and a half years to file a writ petition in June 2018.“The state cannot convert the plea of jurisdictional error into an independent means of reopening the entire dispute after having participated in the earlier proceedings and exhausted its appellate remedies. It is also relevant to note that the lower appellate court’s finding was not based solely upon the land tribunal order. The court considered the historical revenue records, as well as the longstanding sale transactions concerning the property,” the division bench said.“The land in question has been the subject matter of registered transactions commencing from 1918, and an extent of 20 guntas was acquired by the govt on Oct 18, 1931, for a borewell, where the land was shown as ‘dry land’ in the gazette notification published for the acquisition. These facts were part of the records considered in the earlier litigation and cannot now be disregarded while examining the state’s jurisdictional objection,” the division bench observed while rejecting the writ appeals.
