The Supreme Court has made it clear that quasi-judicial authorities cannot revisit their own decisions unless the law explicitly allows them to do so. Review power, the Court said, is not something that can be assumed or borrowed from executive instructions—it must come straight from the statute.
Setting aside a ruling of the Calcutta High Court, a bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Kotiswar Singh struck down a Revenue Officer’s attempt to reopen a long-settled land vesting decision. The Court held that the exercise of review jurisdiction in this case was fundamentally flawed and legally void from the outset.
At the heart of the dispute was land governed by the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act, 1953. The land had earlier been vested in the State through a formal order passed by the Revenue Officer. Years later, the same officer revisited that decision, citing an executive direction from the State government that referred to economic considerations and proposed industrial use, and re-vested the land in favour of a private company.
The Supreme Court was not persuaded.
The bench underscored that the power of review is neither automatic nor inherent. It must be conferred by legislation—either in clear terms or by unavoidable implication. In this case, the WBEA Act does neither. On the contrary, the Act contains an explicit bar against reopening matters that have already been examined and decided under its framework.
The Court also took issue with the reasoning adopted by the High Court, which had treated a government order approved by the Minister-in-Charge as sufficient authority to justify the review. According to the Supreme Court, this approach blurred a crucial line by equating executive directions with statutory powers, and by assuming that review is merely a procedural extension of adjudicatory functions.
Executive convenience, the judgment made clear, cannot override legislative limits.
With these findings, the Court allowed the appeal and reaffirmed a core principle of administrative law: quasi-judicial bodies must operate strictly within the powers granted to them by statute—and nothing beyond.
