कुळ कायदा कलम 43 व 63: जमीन खरेदी-विक्रीचे नियम

कुळ कायदा (kul kayda) is the Bombay — now Maharashtra — Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, and कलम 43 व 63 are its two transfer restrictions that still decide whether a plot of farmland can change hands. A कलम 43 entry on the 7/12 utara means a tenant purchased the land under the Act and cannot sell it without the Collector’s prior sanction — except that, after the amendment reported effective February 7, 2014, a sale ten years or more after the purchase needs no sanction if the seller pays a nazrana of 40 times the land’s assessment and the buyer is an agriculturist within ceiling limits. कलम 63 bars sale to non-agriculturists — with a 2016 exemption for land zoned non-agricultural in municipal and planning-authority areas, tied to a five-year use deadline. Deals that ignore either section are invalid, and under Section 84C the land can vest in the government. Here is how to read the entry, and every rule and charge that follows from it.

कुळ कायदा in brief: 32G, Tillers’ Day and how tenants became owners

The Act’s purpose was blunt: move ownership of farmland from absentee landlords to the people actually tilling it. April 1, 1957 — Tillers’ Day — is the hinge date: a tenant (कुळ) lawfully cultivating a landlord’s agricultural land on that day was deemed to have purchased it. The machinery that completed the deemed purchase is Section 32G (कलम 32 ग): the Agricultural Lands Tribunal (in practice, tahsildar-level proceedings) issued notices, verified that the कुळ was actually cultivating the land on Tillers’ Day, and fixed the purchase price — Marathi revenue guides describe the fixed price as falling between 20 and 200 times the assessment of the land. Once the tenant paid the price in full, Section 32M (कलम 32 म) gave them a purchase certificate — the निर्णायक पुरावा (conclusive proof) of the purchase — and the tenant’s name moved into the भोगवटादार (occupant) box of the 7/12.

That is where the story turns. Ownership won through the statute came with strings attached: land purchased this way is held on नवीन शर्त (navin sharat — new conditions), and Section 43 is the string. The full statutory text of both sections is on Indian Kanoon (Section 43, Section 63) — everything below is built on those texts and the amendment commentaries cited inline.

Spotting kul and नवीन शर्त entries on the 7/12

Open bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in, pull the plot’s 7/12, and read two places before anything else:

1. इतर हक्क (other rights) column. Kul kayda history shows up here as entries like “कुळ कायदा कलम 43 च्या बंधनास पात्र” (subject to Section 43 restrictions), “32 ग” (a price-fixing proceeding), “32 म प्रमाणपत्राने खरेदी” (purchased under a 32M certificate), a protected tenant’s name recorded as कुळ, or a plain “नवीन शर्त” note. Each phrasing tells you where in the pipeline the plot sits: a bare कुळ entry means a tenancy claim exists or existed; 32ग/32म entries mean the statutory purchase happened; a कलम 43 note means the restriction applies to any transfer.
2. The occupancy class. Restricted-tenure plots are typically recorded as भोगवटादार वर्ग 2 (Occupant Class II) — sale, lease, gift, mortgage or partition only with government permission — as against भोगवटादार वर्ग 1, the freely transferable old-tenure (जुनी शर्त) holding. The class system is the same one explained in our devasthan inam guide, where a third label — इनाम वर्ग 3 — marks temple-grant land; a वर्ग 2 plot can carry a kul kayda note, a vatan/inam note, or a ceiling-grant note, and the reason behind the class decides which conversion rule applies.

Two buyer habits make the difference. First, read every line of इतर हक्क — the same column carries loan charges and lis pendens notes, and a kul entry is easy to skim past. Second, pull the ferfar chain, not just today’s extract: a plot whose 32G entry was quietly deleted decades ago without a 32M certificate or a Collector’s order is a dispute waiting for a buyer. For anything you will sign against, use the digitally signed copies from digitalsatbara.mahabhumi.gov.in.

कलम 43: the restriction, and the 2014 ten-year relaxation

Section 43(1) covers land a tenant purchased under Sections 32, 32F, 32-I, 32-O, 33C or 43-1D, or bought in a Section 32P/64 sale. None of it can be transferred — by sale, gift, exchange, mortgage, lease or assignment — without the previous sanction of the Collector. The statute carves out one standing exception: a mortgage in favour of the government or a registered co-operative society for a land-improvement loan needs no sanction. Section 43(2) states the consequence plainly: a transfer in contravention is invalid.

The relaxation everyone asks about is the second proviso to Section 43(1), introduced by the amendment that the Lawyers Club India commentary on the Act reports as effective February 7, 2014. Once ten years have elapsed from the date of the tenant’s purchase (or the Section 32P/64 sale), no prior sanction is required — if all of these hold:

• the seller pays the state a नजराणा (nazrana) of forty times the assessment — the land revenue figure printed on the 7/12 — for the plot;
• the buyer is an agriculturist;
• the buyer’s total holding after purchase stays within the ceiling under the Maharashtra Agricultural Lands (Ceiling on Holdings) Act, 1961; and
• the transfer does not violate the Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947 (no sub-standard tukda).

Note what the proviso is not: it is not a conversion to वर्ग 1, and it is not a percentage of market value. Because the assessment (आकारणी) on farmland is a small revenue figure, forty times the assessment is usually a modest sum — which is exactly why sellers inside the ten-year window, who must still face the Collector, sometimes wrongly assume the same easy route applies to them.

Collector permission and nazrana: how the process actually runs

Within ten years of the purchase — or where the buyer is not an agriculturist, or any proviso condition fails — the route is an application for the Collector’s sanction, filed through the tahsil office with the plot’s papers: current 7/12 and 8A, the ferfar extracts showing the 32G/32M history, the proposed transaction’s details, and the buyer’s agriculturist proof (their own 7/12 or khate utara). The Collector grants or refuses sanction on prescribed conditions; no official fee schedule or statutory timeline for this sanction is published on any government source we could verify, so treat any agent’s “fixed government charge” quote with suspicion.

After ten years, the working sequence under the proviso is payment-first: the nazrana of 40 × assessment is deposited with the revenue authorities (the tahsil raises the demand and the amount goes to the government treasury by challan), the payment is recorded through the ferfar pipeline, and the sale deed proceeds without a sanction order. For comparison, the general conversion route for other नवीन शर्त categories — vatan and similar granted lands — is a 50% of current market value nazrana under the July 9, 2002 circular framework described in Marathi revenue guides (application to the tahsil, demand note, treasury deposit, Form 6 entry, mandal officer’s order removing the वर्ग 2 note). Those same guides state that kul kayda Section 43 land is excluded from that general route — its path is the Section 43 proviso above, not the 50% counter.

One more figure circulates in this space and deserves a flag: a lawyer’s answer on PathLegal (August 2017) states that a transfer of kalam 43 land made without prior approval can be regularised by paying 50% of the ready-reckoner value (agricultural use) or 75% (non-agricultural use) to the government. We found this in no statute text or government notification — treat it as one practitioner’s account of a regularisation practice, and verify at the tahsil before relying on it.

कलम 63: बिगर शेतकरी जमीन खरेदी — non-farmers, and the 2016 urban exemption

Section 63 is the other half of the kul kayda that buyers hit: agricultural land cannot be sold, gifted, exchanged, leased or mortgaged to a person who is not an agriculturist — बिगर शेतकरी — without the Collector’s permission. Two statutory filters sharpen the bar: permission for an agricultural-purpose purchase must be refused if the buyer’s annual income from other sources is ₹12,000 or more (a threshold added in 1975 and never updated), and no transfer may leave an agriculturist holding more than two-thirds of the ceiling area under the 1961 ceiling law. Dwelling houses passing to agricultural labourers and artisans, and co-operative mortgages, sit outside the bar.

Maharashtra Act No. 1 of 2016 changed the map. Per the Legally India comparative study of the amendment, the Section 63 bar no longer applies to land that is:

• within the limits of a Municipal Corporation or Municipal Council, or
• within the jurisdiction of a Special Planning Authority or New Town Development Authority, and allocated to residential, commercial, industrial or any other non-agricultural use in the draft or final Regional Plan or Town Planning Scheme.

The exemption is conditional, not free: the buyer must put the land to the designated non-agricultural use within five years of the transfer, the condition is entered in the record of rights, and a resale before ten years needs the Collector’s permission plus transfer charges of 25% of the ready-reckoner market value. Fail the use deadline and the resumption machinery described in the next section kicks in. For a non-farmer, then, the 2016 answer is: inside a corporation/council or a planning authority’s NA zone, you can buy — on the clock; outside those areas, Section 63 still stands, and the ₹12,000 filter makes routine permission practically unavailable for farmland-as-farmland purchases.

कलम 43 vs 63 vs 63-1A: which rule are you actually under?

The 63-1A numbers, from the same 2016 comparative: a buyer holding the land as Occupant Class II pays 2% of the purchase price (bona fide industrial use) or 50% (integrated township project) within one month of the sale deed — missing that window raises the demand to 75% of the purchase price or the ready-reckoner market value, whichever is higher. Selling within the ten-year period needs the Collector’s nod plus 25% of the RR market value if the buyer will continue a bona fide industrial use, or 50% if the land goes to any other non-agricultural purpose — with a further 48% of the original purchase price where the land was Class-II. And if the industrial use never materialises within the five-plus-five years: the Collector resumes the land after a one-month notice, offers it back to the original owner at the original sale price (90 days to accept), auctions it if declined, and refunds the defaulting buyer only what they originally paid.

Unauthorized deals: Section 84C, and why “we’ll regularise later” fails

Section 84C is the enforcement arm. When a transfer breaches Section 43 or 63, the Mamlatdar (tahsildar) can declare it invalid — and the consequence is harsher than most parties expect: the land vests in the State Government. It is not returned to the original owner, and the sale amount the seller received is forfeited to the state. The one exit the provision offers is an undertaking by both parties to restore the land to its original position within three months of the order. Marathi revenue guides describe the practical sequence the same way: a tahsildar inquiry, cancellation of the transaction, and the land recorded as सरकारजमा (vested in government).

The reach of these bars is wider than sale deeds. In Vinodchandra Sakarlal Kapadia v. State of Gujarat (2020), the Supreme Court — construing the identical scheme in the Gujarat tenancy act — held that even a will leaving agricultural land to a non-agriculturist is an “assignment” the Act prohibits. Power-of-attorney sales, unregistered “agreements” with possession handed over, and family arrangements that park restricted land with a non-farmer all sit in the same danger zone: the paper may exist, but the title never moves, and 84C can take the land away from both sides.

Pre-purchase checklist for kul kayda land

A कलम 43 or नवीन शर्त entry is not automatically a dead deal — it is a deal with homework. Before token money:

1. Pull the current 7/12 and read इतर हक्क line by line — कुळ, 32ग, 32म, कलम 43, नवीन शर्त, वर्ग 2. Free copy on bhulekh; signed copy from digitalsatbara for the file.
2. Trace the ferfar chain to the 32G/32M events. Confirm the tenant purchase completed (32M certificate), and that every later transfer either carried a Collector’s sanction or fell under the post-2014 proviso. A past unsanctioned transfer in the chain is an 84C risk that does not expire quietly.
3. Date the purchase. Ten years elapsed → the seller’s route is the 40 × assessment nazrana, and you (the buyer) must be an agriculturist within ceiling. Less than ten years → Collector’s sanction first, registration second. Never the reverse.
4. If you are a बिगर शेतकरी, check the zone before the plot: municipal corporation/council limits or a planning authority’s NA allocation (draft or final plan) takes Section 63 out of the way — with the five-year use clock. Outside those zones, budget for the Section 63 permission or don’t buy.
5. Get the nazrana payment and the deletion of the restriction recorded through a certified ferfar before registration — a receipt without a mutation protects nobody.
6. Fold this into the full due-diligence sweep — Index 2 search, encumbrances, tukda bandi, stamp duty — from our jamin kharedi-vikri guide, or hand the whole chain to a professional title check that reads the 32G-to-today history for you.

A kul kayda entry was written into your 7/12 decades ago — but ferfars against it happen on ordinary Tuesdays: a nazrana recorded, a sanction entered, an 84C notice posted. BhuMe watches your survey number, alerts you on WhatsApp the moment a mutation or notice touches your record, and fetches the digitally signed 7/12, 8A and ferfar with the Marathi handled — so a restriction, or its removal, never changes your record without you knowing.