No personality

Has the landowner the right to choose the CARP beneficiaries? If the CARP beneficiaries are not qualified, will the land revert back to the landowner? After the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has already issued a Notice of Acquisition under the compulsory acquisition process, can the landowner or anyone acting in its behalf still apply for its conversion to industrial/commercial use? These are the questions answered in this case of CLR.

CLR is a realty company owning a 46.1476 hectares of land in Bataan covered by TCT 60221. On August 28, 1991 it received a Notice of Acquisition of said land from the DAR Regional Office followed by a Notice of Valuation under which the property was valued at P273,559.00. CLR challenged the valuation, claiming it was unconscionably low since, under its Sworn Statement of Agricultural Landholdings filed with the Assessor’s Office, its fair value was P4,614,476.00.

On September 8, 1992, CLR wrote the DAR Regional Director requesting that the issuance of the Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAS) covering its property be held in abeyance. Barely a month later CLR formally requested and applied with the DAR Region for conversion of the land from agricultural to industrial/commercial use, without first requesting for the lifting of the land coverage under the CARP.

It turned out that when CLR made its deferment request and filed its application conversion, CLOAS were already issued to 19 farmer beneficiaries headed by Rodolfo (Rodolfo, et. al.), some of them having secured their corresponding certificates of titles on September 1, 1992, while the others, the following day. Since then, Rodolfo, et. al. have entered possession of said land and planted crops thereon.

Later apprised of this CLOA issuance, CLR filed with the DAR Adjudication Board (DARAB Region III) a petition praying for the cancellation of the CLOAS on the ground of irregular, premature and anomalous issuance. It alleged that the CLOA recipients do not meet the basic farmer-beneficiary qualification requirement and are not under the order of priority defined in R.A. 6657 of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (Section 27). Will CLR’s petition prosper?

No. The landowner does not have the right to select who the beneficiaries should be. It is the Municipal or Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer (MARO or PARO) and the Barangay Agrarian Reform Committee (BARC) which screen and select the possible agrarian beneficiaries. Other farmers who were not selected and claimed to have priority can file a written protest with the MARO or PARO. Denying a landowner the right to choose a CARP beneficiary is, in context, only proper. For, a covered landholding does not revert back to the owner even if the beneficiaries thus selected do not meet all the necessary qualifications. Should it be found that the beneficiaries are indeed not qualified the land acquired by the State for agrarian reform purposes will not be returned to the landowner but shall go instead to other qualified beneficiaries. CLR, upon its receipt of the Notice of Acquisition of its land never disputed the propriety, let alone asked for the lifting of such acquisition. All it did was to except from the valuation of the land. It does not therefore have a claim to retaining ownership of the land.

Even if CLR has the personality to question the selection of the beneficiaries, its arguments against Rodolfo et. al.’s qualifications do not bear sufficient weight to peremptorily justify the cancellation of the issued CLOAS. It may be that Rodolfo et. al. were employed or self-employed. This reality however does not per se argue against their qualifications as CARP beneficiaries at the time the award was made. For all the law requires in the minimum is that the prospective beneficiary be a landless resident preferably of the barangay or municipality, as the case may be, where the landholding is located, provided he has, in the language of Section 22, R.A. 6657, the willingness, aptitude, and ability to cultivate and make the land as productive as possible. A farmer-beneficiary need not undertake every chore in the cultivation of the farmholding all by his personal self.

CLR cannot likewise ask for the conversion of said land to industrial/commercial use. Under Administrative Order 1 Series of 1990, after the DAR has issued a notice of acquisition of an agricultural land under the compulsory acquisition process…no application for conversion of said land shall be given due course. Given this perspective, it cannot plausibly be said that the issuance of CLOAS during the pendency of the conversion proceedings was anomalous, irregular or premature (Hermoso et. al. vs. C.L. Realty Corporation, G.R. 140312, May 5, 2006)

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