Time-bound tenant purchase rights under tenancy law lapse if not exercised, and non-action does not create deemed purchase.

A tenant whose land is released from Government management under the Bombay Tenancy & Agricultural Lands Act does not become a deemed purchaser merely because the landlord does not terminate the tenancy. The proviso to Section 88(1)(d) confers a limited right to purchase, and that right must be exercised within the prescribed time; intimation to the landlord and Tribunal is treated as part of that exercise. If the tenant does not act within time, the statutory right lapses and cannot be revived by a later Section 32-G application for fixation of price.

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Issues: Whether a tenant, whose land is released from Government management under the Bombay Tenancy & Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, loses the right to purchase the land if he does not exercise the option and intimate it within the period prescribed by the proviso to Section 88(1)(d), and whether such failure makes him a deemed purchaser.

Analysis: Section 88(1)(d) postpones the application of the earlier provisions while the land remains under Government management, but on release those provisions revive subject to the specified modification. In the case of a non-permanent tenancy, the landlord gets one year to terminate the tenancy and the tenant gets a further one year to purchase the land under Section 32. The right conferred by the proviso is a right to purchase, not an automatic deemed purchase. The scheme of the Act distinguishes between a tenant who becomes a deemed purchaser by force of statute and a tenant who must actively exercise an option to purchase. The absence of an express intimation requirement in Section 88 does not alter that distinction, because intimation to the landlord and Tribunal is treated as an incident of exercising the option. The tenant's failure to exercise that right within time leaves the right unenforceable and does not convert him into a deemed purchaser. A later application under Section 32-G for fixation of price cannot revive a right already lost by expiry of the statutory period.

Conclusion: The tenant did not become a deemed purchaser by mere non-termination of the tenancy by the landlord, and his failure to exercise the option within time caused the statutory right to purchase to lapse.

Final Conclusion: The impugned order could not be sustained insofar as it treated the tenant's inaction as sufficient to preserve a right of purchase and to support fixation of price years later; the appeals were therefore allowed to that extent.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a statute confers only a right to purchase within a prescribed period, failure to exercise that right within time results in forfeiture of the right and does not create a deemed purchase by implication.

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