In Brief
In this case, brothers sought to exercise pre-emption rights under the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955, when their sisters sold their share of family property to an outsider. The Supreme Court held that pre-emption applications require upfront deposit of the full sale consideration plus 10% with the application itself—this is a mandatory precondition, not optional. Since the pre-emptors failed to make this deposit initially and the High Court wrongly allowed them to deposit later, the Court allowed the appeals and dismissed the pre-emption application, quashing the orders of the lower courts.
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