Section 9August 7, 2009, Sec./Art. 9

Section 24 of Republic Act No. 6657, as amended, is hereby further amended to read as follows:

"SEC. 24. Award to Beneficiaries. - The rights and responsibilities of the beneficiaries shall commence from their receipt of a duly registered emancipation patent or certificate of land ownership award and their actual physical possession of the awarded land. Such award shall be completed in not more than one hundred eighty (180) days from the date of registration of the title in the name of the Republic of the Philippines: Provided, That the emancipation patents, the certificates of land ownership award, and other titles issued under any agrarian reform program shall be indefeasible and imprescriptible after one (1) year from its registration with the Office of the Registry of Deeds, subject to the conditions, limitations and qualifications of this Act, the property registration decree, and other pertinent laws.

The emancipation patents or the certificates of land ownership award being titles brought under the operation of the torrens system, are conferred with the same indefeasibility and security afforded to all titles under the said system, as provided for by Presidential Decree No. 1529, as amended by Republic Act No. 6732.

"It is the ministerial duty of the Registry of Deeds to register the title of the land in the name of the Republic of the Philippines, after the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) has certified that the necessary deposit in the name of the landowner constituting full payment in cash or in bond with due notice to the landowner and the registration of the certificate of land ownership award issued to the beneficiaries, and to cancel previous titles pertaining thereto.

"Identified and qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries, based on Section 22 of Republic Act No. 6657, as, amended, shall have usufructuary rights over the awarded land as soon as the DAR takes possession of such land, and such right shall not be diminished even pending the awarding of the emancipation patent or the certificate of land ownership award.

"All cases involving the cancellation of registered emancipation patents, certificates of land ownership award, and other titles issued under any agrarian reform program are within the exclusive and original jurisdiction of the Secretary of the DAR."