VIRUPAKSHAYYA SHANKARAYYA Vs. NEELAKANTA SHIVACHARYA PATTADADEVARU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondent-plaintiff has placed himself within two horns of a bull and it is not possible for him to avoid strike by one or the other. And the bull is no ordinary one, as it has the backing and the blessings of no less powerful a body that Privy Council of Jamkhandi State, within whose territorial jurisdiction the suit property was situate, for the recovery of which the respondent made his claim by filing the present suit on 4-2-1954. It is a pity that despite the case of the appellant-defendant having received support from the Privy Council, he came to lose on the same point, to start with, at the hand of Civil Judge. The High Court, which ultimately upheld the view of the Civil Judge, should not have allowed this piquant situation to prevail.

(2.) The broad facts of the case at hand consist in filing of the present suit by respondent No. 1 in 1954, seeking possession of the suit property, as validly appointed Padadayya (Mathadhipati) of the math at Jamkhandi. The plaintiff claimed this property on the assertion that he had been duly installed as Padadayya on 30-1-1944, as a successor to Virupakshayya I, who had died as early as 1903. According to him, defendant Nos. 1 and 2 had not been duly installed as Padadayyas; so also, one Shivalingayya, who according to defendant No. 1 had been installed as Padadayya in 1935 and had in turn nominated him as Padadayya in 1943. There is no dispute at all between the parties that if Shivalingayya had been validly nominated and installed as Padadayya, the plaintiff cannot succeed. And it is precisely this aspect of the case which had come to be decided in favour of Shivalingayya by the Privy Council in an earlier litigation began by one Andanayya in 1934, to which, of course, the present plaintiff was not a party, but, according to him, it was the aforesaid Andanayya who had installed him as Padadayya on 30-1-1944.

(3.) Now, if the present suit has to be regarded as one for possession of suit property simpliciter, as is the prayer in the plaint, it would be hit by Section 50 read with 51 of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 (the Act). To save this blow by the bull, Shri Wad, appearing for the respondent No. 1, first urged that the suit was really not for possession simpliciter but was for declaration of the status of the plaintiff as Padadayya and prayer for possession may be treated as consequential relief. But, if the present be taken as a suit for declaration, then it was hopelessly barred, because the declaration sought is that the plaintiff had become Padadayya after Virupakshayya I had died in 1903. As the suit was filed in 1954 it was apparently much beyond the time. Faced with this situation, Shri Wad's effort was to convince us that the suit is not hit by Sections 50 and 51 of the Act.