Transfer of Property Act Section 51 — Improvements made by bona fide holders under defective titles
CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY
General
Summary
If you buy or receive property and make improvements to it, honestly believing you are the full owner, but later someone with a better legal claim forces you off the land, you can ask that person to either pay you for the value of those improvements or sell you the property at its current market price (not counting the improvements you made). The payment you get for the improvements is based on what they are worth at the time you are evicted. If you planted or sowed crops that are still growing when you are evicted, you have the right to take those crops and to enter and leave the land freely to collect and carry them away.
Official Text
When the transferee of immoveable property makes any improvement on the property, believing in good faith that he is absolutely entitled thereto, and he is subsequently evicted there from by any person having a better title, the transferee has a right to require the person causing the eviction either to have the value of the improvement estimated and paid or secured to the transferee, or to sell his interest in the property to the transferee at the then market value thereof, irrespective of the value of such improvement. The amount to be paid or secured in respect of such improvement shall be the estimated value thereof at the time of the eviction. When, under the circumstances aforesaid, the transferee has planted or sown on the property crops which are growing when he is evicted therefrom, he is entitled to such crops and to free ingress and egress to gather and carry them.