The right to property under Article 300A is a constitutional right, not a fundamental right. Discuss its implications for state action in land acquisition, registration, and mutation, with reference to recent judicial pronouncements.

The 44th Constitutional Amendment, 1978 deleted Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 and relocated property to Article 300A — "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law" [1]. Downgraded in remedy, it nonetheless remains a substantive constitutional limit on arbitrary state action.

Changed nature of the right

• Loss of fundamental status removes the direct Article 32 remedy; deprivation is tested for legality and non-arbitrariness, not for reasonableness of restriction [1].
• Courts have progressively read Article 300A as a constitutional and human right, requiring that any executive deprivation trace back to a valid statute [2].

Land acquisition

• The state retains eminent domain, but only through a law — hence compulsory acquisition must follow statutory procedure, fair compensation and rehabilitation, not executive fiat [1].
• Subordinate rules or notifications that curtail property rights beyond their parent Act are liable to be quashed [2].

Registration

• In Samiullah v. State of Bihar (2025), the Supreme Court struck down sub-rules of the Bihar Registration Rules that made proof of mutation a precondition for registering sale deeds, holding them ultra vires Section 69 of the Registration Act, 1908, arbitrary, and violative of Article 300A [2][3].
• The Court clarified that registration concerns documents, not titles — it gives public notice, creating only presumptive ownership [3][4].

Mutation

• Mutation (dakhil-kharij) is an administrative revenue-record update governed by separate state law; it confers no ownership and cannot be imported into registration [2][4].
• Weak records deepen the problem: mutation is computerised in roughly half of villages, and land disputes account for around two-thirds of pending civil cases [4].

Article 300A thus survives as a shield of legality rather than a fundamental guarantee. The durable answer lies in moving from presumptive to conclusive titling with state indemnity, backed by integrated registration–revenue records under DILRMP — a transition Andhra Pradesh's 2024 repeal of its Land Titling Act shows must be built on careful consultation [5].