The Supreme Court travelled nearly 160 years back in history to study the colonial Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 to decide the true ownership of plots of land the foreign power parcelled out to Indian ‘Alvara’ (permit) holders for cultivation in Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1923 and 1930.

A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant, in a judgment pronounced on Wednesday (September 24, 2025), made it a point to highlight that the land distributed by the Portuguese was of such poor quality even the cultivation of low-yield indigenous food grains, including nagli , kodra , and varai , had proved unviable.

However, the low quality of the land did not stop a legal wrangle from starting between the descendants of the original Alvara holders, including Divyagnakumari Harisinh Parmar, an

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