Farmer wins partial victory in lawsuit over Caroni (1975) land leases

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A farmer has par­tial­ly suc­ceed­ed in his law­suit over be­ing de­clared the law­ful ten­ant of two parcels of land he leased from Ca­roni (1975) Ltd be­fore its clo­sure. 

Ear­li­er this month, High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son up­held the law­suit brought by Ram­nar­ine Kat­wa­roo against the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Kat­wa­roo and two of his rel­a­tives ob­tained the leas­es for the land at Gand­hi Vil­lage, Debe, in 1970 and 1984. 

They paid their rent and their leas­es were re­newed af­ter they ex­pired in five-year in­ter­vals. 

In Au­gust 2001, then Ca­roni (1975) Ltd CEO wrote to Kat­wa­roo to be­gin dis­cus­sions for new ten­an­cy agree­ments. 

The dis­cus­sions were not con­clud­ed by the time the com­pa­ny was put in­to liq­ui­da­tion in 2003.

Sig­nif­i­cant land hold­ings held by the com­pa­ny were vest­ed in the State to be man­aged by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. 

When Kat­wa­roo sought to reg­u­larise his sta­tus as ten­ant, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries’ Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion could not lo­cate phys­i­cal copies of his ten­an­cy agree­ments. 

It was ac­cept­ed that al­though the leas­es had ex­pired, Kat­wa­roo con­tin­ued to pay the rent as re­quired. 

While lawyers for the com­mis­sion­er agreed that Kat­wa­roo had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that new ten­an­cy agree­ments would be is­sued based on the cor­re­spon­dence from the now-de­funct com­pa­ny, they claimed that their client had to seek ap­proval from the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and the Cab­i­net un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015.

It al­so claimed that he breached the ten­an­cy agree­ments by stop­ping con­duct­ing agri­cul­ture ac­tiv­i­ty on the land and build­ing res­i­den­tial build­ings on it. 

Kat­wa­roo, through his lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, filed the case seek­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion over oc­cu­pa­tion pend­ing fi­nal ap­proval, as he claimed that there would be prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of such.

Jus­tice Wil­son agreed with the po­si­tion ad­vanced, as she on­ly agreed to de­clare that he is the law­ful oc­cu­pi­er/ten­ant of the land. 

“While this recog­ni­tion pro­vides sup­port for the grant of de­clara­to­ry re­lief, it does not ob­vi­ate the need for com­pli­ance with the le­gal and pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ments for the grant of new ten­an­cy agree­ments, or a change of use of any par­cel, as the case may be,” she said. 

“I have there­fore con­clud­ed that the ev­i­dence sup­ports on­ly a nar­row de­c­la­ra­tion of the claimant’s law­ful oc­cu­pa­tion of the parcels as a ten­ant pend­ing for­mal de­ter­mi­na­tion of his terms of oc­cu­pa­tion un­der the ap­plic­a­ble le­gal frame­work, in­clud­ing by the grant of new ten­an­cy agree­ments,” she added. 

The State was or­dered to pay 75 per cent of Kat­wa­roo’s le­gal costs for the law­suit.

The com­mis­sion­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Che Richards, Ste­fan Jaikaran and Rad­ha Sookdeo.