Hyderabad: Justice T. Vinod Kumar of the Telangana High Court dismissed a civil revision petition filed by the Villa Springs House Owners Welfare Association, seeking restoration of a temporary injunction over a disputed 0.8 guntas of land in Kowkoor, Medchal-Malkajgiri district. The judge was dealing with a plea filed by the association, representing 110 villa owners, who claimed rights over the land based on a 2015 memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the original landowners, which permitted limited use of 0.03 guntas for staff quarters and recreational purposes.The court made it clear that a claim for temporary injunction could not be sustained, if any party or person did not possess absolute title or settled possession over the scheduled property. The court could not invoke the discretionary relief of injunction based on the claim of having used the disputed land for a length of time.If the usage or possession was not substantiated by reliable documentary evidence, courts could view it as failure to establish a foundational element, a prima facie requirement for invoking the discretionary relief of injunction.The Villa Springs House Owners Welfare Association had challenged the orders of the district court which had overturned a trial court decision which had aside the injunction orders issued in its favour in a disputed land in which alleged amenities were provided to the villa owners.However, landowners Vangala Mounika Devi and others claimed that the land was never handed over to the association. They submitted that an unregistered MoU was executed to use only 363 square yards of land for a temporary period by the villa residents, for a specific period on certain conditions.The association claimed around 968 square yards of land and obtained injunction orders in the trial court based on brochures, photographs, Google images, and a rough sketch. The landowners contended that these lacked evidentiary value. No sanctioned layout plan was produced to demonstrate that the disputed land formed part of the common area or was designated as a recreational facility either in the sanctioned layout or revised layout.
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