Five, including ex-Dar mayor’s son Kondo lose land case again

FIVE prominent persons, including Adnan Kitwana Kondo, have again lost their bid to challenge the Registrar of Titles’ decision to vest the ownerships of their respective plots situated at Tanganyika Parkers area to the President of the United Republic of Tanzania.

This follows the decision given by the High Court in Dar es Salaam after rejecting with costs the application they had lodged, seeking to admit the appeal against the decision of the registrar, notwithstanding the lapse of time within which to issue the notice to him and to lodge the appeal.

Apart from Mr Kondo, a son of former Dar es Salaam Mayor Kitwana Kondo, other applicants who lost the application are Mahmood Karimjee, Fakhrudin Bharmal, Hamid Bharmal, Zainul Fakhruddin and Gulamhussin Bharmal.

This is the second time for them to become losers in the issue. Their first attempt was in 2016. The plots in question bear Numbers 630, 631, 633,629 and 632 at Tanganyika Parkers, Kawe Beach, in Kinondoni Municipality, on which the National Housing Corporation is currently undertaking a major housing construction project.

The two institutions have been joined in the application as interested parties. In his recent ruling, Judge Isaya Arufani upheld two grounds of objections advanced by seasoned advocate Jerome Msemwa, for the two interested parties, that the application was incompetent and bad in law for being filed at an unknown registry.

The judge pointed out that the applicants were required to show in their pleadings or documents the registry of the High Court in order to establish the court where the proceedings were instituted had jurisdiction to entertain the matter, to avoid confusion in filing other subsequent pleadings.

“In the premises the court has found the omission to show the application was filed in which registry of the High Court is an irregularity which renders the application defective,” the judge ruled.

The other ground of objection upheld related to services of notice to the Registrar of Titles, the respondent. Advocate Msemwa had forcefully submitted that the application was incompetent in law as the notice with intention to appeal dated January 2, 2017, attached to the affidavit in support of the application, was served to the respondent on January 2, 2017 out of statutory time without leave of the court.

The judge noted in his ruling that the decision by the respondent intending to appeal was made in October 2013 and the notice was supposed to be served to the High Court and the Registrar within one month from the date of the decision.

According to him, although the court is empowered to admit the appeal out of time on good cause, notwithstanding that the period of limitation prescribed by the law had elapsed, the court failed to see anywhere in the law for it to dispense with the requirement of serving the Registrar with the notice.

“Since the law requires the Registrar of Titles to be served with notice of an intention to appeal within one month from the date of the decision intended to be challenged and as demonstrated (he) was served out of time without leave from any authority, then it is as good as if he has not been served,” he said.