देवस्थान इनाम जमीन कायदा 2026: 7/12 वर कशी ओळखाल?

देवस्थान इनाम जमीन (devasthan inam land) is land granted to a temple or religious institution generations ago, recorded as इनाम वर्ग 3 (inam class III) in the revenue record. On the 7/12 utara it shows in the इतर हक्क (other rights) column — typically as “देवस्थान इनाम वर्ग 3” — with the deity or temple trust as holder. The land belongs to the deity; the वहिवाटदार (vahiwatdar — manager) cannot sell it, and the Bombay High Court reaffirmed in April 2025 that such sales are void. The Maharashtra Devasthan Inams Abolition Act, 2026 — a draft that would convert occupants to भोगवटादार वर्ग 1 against a premium — is on hold as of August 2026, per Free Press Journal reporting: a committee is redrafting it and objections run until September 15, 2026. Here is how to read your record, and what the law would change.

What is devasthan inam — इनाम वर्ग 3 explained

Devasthan (देवस्थान — “the deity’s place”) inams are revenue-free or revenue-reduced land grants made to temples and religious institutions by rulers going back to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s era and the princely families that followed. The grant’s purpose was income: the land’s produce funded नित्य पूजा (daily worship), naivedya, festivals, annachhatras (community kitchens) and the upkeep of the shrine. British-era law preserved these grants — the Bombay exemption legislation of 1863 recorded them and its Section 8(3) barred their transfer — and the Inam Commission’s alienation register classified them as inam class III, the devasthan/dharmadaya category, distinct from the personal and service inams (classes like saranjam and watan) that Maharashtra abolished through separate statutes in the 1950s.

Two legal facts follow from that history and still hold today. First, the deity is the owner — Indian law treats the deity as a juristic person capable of holding property, a line of rulings running from the Bombay High Court in the 1880s through the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment. Second, whoever manages or cultivates the land is not the owner: the pujari, gurav, trustee or vahiwatdar holds it as custodian for the deity’s benefit. However long the family has managed the plot, management does not ripen into ownership.

How much land is involved is genuinely disputed in the reporting: Free Press Journal’s May 2026 coverage put devasthan inam land at roughly 1 lakh hectares statewide — most of it in private possession — with the Western Maharashtra Devasthan Committee alone (about 3,000 temples, including Kolhapur’s Mahalaxmi and Jotiba) accounting for close to 50,000 acres, while its June 2026 report cited about 5.5 lakh hectares of temple land across the state. The two figures likely measure different things; no official consolidated number has been published.

Check your 7/12: where “देवस्थान इनाम वर्ग 3” appears

Open bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in, select your division, district, taluka and village, and pull the plot’s 7/12. Then read three places:

1. इतर हक्क (other rights) column — this is where the devasthan status lives. Look for entries like “देवस्थान इनाम वर्ग 3”, “देवस्थान”, the temple or deity’s name, or a reference to the inam register. The same column carries entries such as NA order numbers and loan charges, so read every line.
2. The occupant (भोगवटादार) box — devasthan plots often show the deity or the temple trust as holder, sometimes with the vahiwatdar’s name noted as manager.
3. The revenue column — many devasthan inam plots carry a full or partial exemption from land revenue (जमीन महसूल माफ), a fingerprint of the original grant.

One check the current extract alone cannot do: compare with older records. In its April 2025 ruling the Bombay High Court described the standard land-grab sequence — first get the word “देवस्थान” deleted from the revenue entries, then get the revenue exemption withdrawn, then deal with the land as private property. A clean current 7/12 means little if the 1970s or 1990s record showed a devasthan entry; the court held the deletion does not change the land’s character. Old 7/12 and ferfar copies come from the Talathi or the record room, and understanding what each box of the 7/12 means makes the comparison much faster.

भोगवटादार वर्ग 1, वर्ग 2 — and where इनाम वर्ग 3 fits

The “वर्ग” (class) labels confuse people because two different classification systems meet on the same page:

So “वर्ग 3” on a devasthan entry is not a third occupancy class — it is the inam classification. A devasthan plot’s occupancy is typically restricted like class 2 land (or shows the deity/trust as holder), and the 2026 draft’s core offer was precisely to move occupants of this land into वर्ग 1. Note also that the standing route for converting ordinary class 2 land into class 1 — the 2019 conversion rules, restarted by a government resolution of March 4, 2025 — excludes inam and devasthan land. There is no lawful conversion counter for devasthan land today; that is exactly what the draft law was meant to create.

The 2026 draft law: what it proposed — and why it’s on hold

The state revenue department circulated the Maharashtra Devasthan Inams Abolition Act, 2026 (draft) in the first week of May 2026, inviting suggestions and objections until June 5, 2026. Per Free Press Journal and Organiser reporting on the draft’s text, its main moves were:

• Abolish devasthan inams (the core Section 3), ending the grant-based tenure
• Convert authorised holders, mirasdars and tenants to Occupant Class I (Sections 4–5), against a premium payable to the temple trust
• Regularise unauthorised occupants in possession from before January 1, 2011, on payment tied to market value (Section 5(1))
• Gaothan residential occupants would get occupancy rights without any occupancy price or nazarana (Sections 4(5), 5(2))
• Land beyond tenancy-ceiling limits would revert to the temple trust, and encroachment after the cut-off would invite 2–5 years’ imprisonment, fines up to market value and summary eviction by the Collector
• Civil court jurisdiction barred on decisions under the act (Section 14), with the Collector getting wide discretion on classification (Section 6)
• Wakf Act, 1995 properties excluded from the act’s scope (Section 1(2))

The backlash was immediate: per FPJ’s May 23 report, more than 1,000 temple trustees and Hindu organisations — the Maharashtra Mandir Mahasangh prominent among them — filed over 300 representations, arguing the draft rewarded encroachers via the 2011 cut-off, stripped the deity of ownership, and protected Waqf properties while unlocking temple land. Critics also pointed out it reversed the state’s own protective stance — government resolutions of 1996, 2010 and 2011 had directed officers to prevent transfers of devasthan land and cancel illegal entries.

On June 6, 2026, Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule announced in Nagpur that the draft is stayed. A high-level committee under Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Vikas Kharge — with the Pune and Konkan divisional commissioners, the Thane and Ahilyanagar collectors and 15 temple representatives — was tasked with a revised draft, with its report due August 15, 2026. Citizens and devasthan authorities can register objections at their District Collector’s office until September 15, 2026, and the minister has said a final bill may reach the legislature in the December 2026 session. That is the whole legal status as of this writing: a stayed draft, a committee, and a possible December bill — no enacted law.

Class 2 → class 1 conversion premium: what is actually known

For devasthan land, the honest answer is: the premium is not fixed anywhere yet. The May 2026 draft proposed conversion to Class I against a premium paid to the temple trust, and regularisation of pre-2011 occupants against payments linked to market value — but no percentage of ready-reckoner value was published in the draft coverage, and the draft itself is on hold. Any specific figure circulating — a WhatsApp forward, an agent’s quote, a “50% नजराणा” claim borrowed from other land categories — has no legal basis for devasthan land as of August 2026. The general class 2 → class 1 conversion rules of 2019 charge premiums for other restricted tenures and expressly leave inam/devasthan land out, so nobody can lawfully take your money for a devasthan conversion today. If the December bill passes, the premium schedule it enacts will be the first real number.

Can devasthan land be sold? What the courts say

No — and the 2025 ruling makes the bar hard to miss. In Suvarna Appasaheb Kshirsagar v. State of Maharashtra (Writ Petition 1811 of 2019, decided April 15, 2025), the Bombay High Court dealt with 14 acres 28 gunthas at Vita in Sangli district belonging to the Mhaswad Sidha Devasthan (full judgment on Indian Kanoon). The court held that:

• Devasthan inam class III land belongs to the deity; the vahiwatdar or manager is a trustee for the deity’s benefit, never the owner
• Section 8(3) of the 1863 Bombay exemption act is an absolute bar on transfer of land held by religious institutions — a sale by a manager claiming ownership is void
• Deleting the devasthan entry from the 7/12 changes nothing: revenue entries are fiscal records, not title, and the religious character of the land survives the deletion
• The state’s 2013 order withdrawing the plot’s revenue exemption was quashed, and the land declared to continue as class III devasthan inam

For buyers the ruling is a checklist in reverse — the court itself narrated the land-grab method (delete the entry, drop the exemption, sell as private land), which means a plot whose devasthan entry vanished recently deserves more suspicion, not less. For occupants it means the only route to ownership is legislative: no purchase, gift, or long possession defeats the deity’s title under current law.

The Marathwada exception

The draft act does not extend to Marathwada. Its text keeps out the areas governed by the Hyderabad Abolition of Inams and Cash Grants Act, 1954 and the Hyderabad Atiyat Inquiries Act, 1952 — the laws that already dealt with inam tenures in the districts of the former Hyderabad state (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Jalna, Beed, Latur, Dharashiv, Nanded, Parbhani, Hingoli) — alongside the Wakf Act, 1995 exclusion. So whatever the Kharge committee produces, a devasthan-type plot in Marathwada stays under the Hyderabad-era framework, and inam questions there are answered from those statutes and the Atiyat records, not from the 2026 draft. If your land is in Marathwada and the 7/12 shows an inam entry, the classification and any regrant history trace to those Acts — a different research trail through the same record room.

What to do now, while the law is on hold

If you cultivate or manage devasthan land:

• Pull the current 7/12 and the old ones. Confirm what the इतर हक्क column says today and what it said decades ago; collect ferfar copies for every change. If the December bill revives conversion, documented, continuous, authorised possession will be the currency.
• Pay nobody for “conversion” yet. No premium exists, no counter is open, and no agent can deliver class 1 status on devasthan land as of August 2026.
• File your say before September 15, 2026. Objections and suggestions on the draft go to your District Collector’s office — this is the window in which the premium, the cut-off date and the holder categories are still movable.
• Don’t attempt a sale. It is void under the 1863 act as the High Court applied it in 2025, and it can cost you the occupancy the draft might otherwise have regularised.

If you are buying land anywhere in Maharashtra:

• Read the इतर हक्क column of the 7/12 yourself before advancing anything; a देवस्थान इनाम entry means the seller cannot pass title, whatever the agreement says.
• Ask for the plot’s older 7/12 extracts and mutation history — the Kshirsagar pattern begins with a deleted entry. A professional title check that reads the ferfar chain catches exactly this.
• If a deal involves “devasthan land that will become class 1 after the new law”, you are being sold legislation that does not exist yet.

A devasthan entry can be quietly deleted, an exemption withdrawn, a ferfar slipped past a family that never checks its record — that is the exact sequence the High Court called out. BhuMe watches your survey number, alerts you on WhatsApp the moment a mutation or notice touches your 7/12, and fetches digitally signed records from digitalsatbara.mahabhumi.gov.in on demand — so whether the December bill arrives or not, your record never changes without you knowing.