Acquisition of ownership by possession (S. 25-27)

For twenty years the residents of a chawl in Girgaon have crossed the open plot next door to reach the road, and nobody objected. Now the owner closes the path. Do the residents have a right to keep walking? And can a family that has lived in an abandoned house for fifteen years claim it as theirs? Sections 25 to 27 of the Limitation Act answer both.

In two minutes

Part IV of the Limitation Act lets long, uninterrupted use ripen into an easement (s.25: twenty years, thirty against Government), protects the owner of a servient tenement who held under a limited interest (s.26), and extinguishes the right to property when the time for a possession suit expires (s.27).

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Civil Procedure Code 1908 and Limitation Act 1963 on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.