BALKRISHNA SOMNATH ANANT DATTATRAYA MALI BALKRISHNA SOMNATH Vs. SADU DEVRAM KOLI:CHINTAMANI GOVIND PATIL:SADU DEVRAM KOLI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two appeals raise a short issue of interpretation of the proviso to Section 32F (1) (a) of the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 (Bombay Act LXVII of 1948) (hereinafter referred to as the Act). The appellants in both the cases are the aggrieved landlords, the tenants right of purchase under the Act having been upheld by the High Court. The correctness of this view is canvassed before us by counsel.

(2.) The facts necessary to appreciate the rival contention may be stated briefly. The parties are different but the issue is identical and so a single judgment will dispose of both the appeals.

(3.) In Civil Appeal No. 2007 of 1969 the widow of a deceased landowner, one Dattatraya, is the appellant. The deceased owned several houses, had a money-lending business and considerable agricultural lands. He left behind him on his death in 1952 a widow (the second appellant) and two sons, one of whom is the first appellant. Admittedly the Act, an agrarian reform measure, was extensively amended by Bombay Act XIII of 1956 conferring great rights on tenants and inflicting serious mayhem on landlordism. The case of the appellants is that there was partition among the mother and the two sons of the agricultural estate where under the second appellant (the widow) was allotted around 80 acres of land out of which about 15 acres were held by the first respondent as a tenant. On the Tillers Day tenants bloomed into owners by the conferment of the right of purchase. On the basis that the first respondent had become the owner, a proceeding for the determination of the purchase-price of these lands was initiated by the Tribunal, as provided under Section 32G of the Act Although notice was not given to the second appellant, the first appellant appeared before the Tribunal, urged the case that the land held by the first respondent was set apart in family partition to his mother, the second appellant, and that since she was a widow she came squarely within the protective provision of the proviso to clause (a) of Section 32F (1) of the Act. The first respondent, however, contested the partition and further pressed the plea that even if the agricultural lands had been divided since the house and the money-lending business and other assets admittedly remained joint, the appellant was ineligible to claim the benefit of the proviso aforesaid. We need not trace the history of the litigation from deck to deck but may conclude the story for the present purpose by stating that the High Court took the view that the second appellant (widow) did not qualify under the said proviso:"The proviso is not satisfied unless the share of a disabled person is separated by metes and bounds in all of the joint family property and unless the agricultural land allotted to him corresponds to his share in the entire property and is not in excess thereof." - This was the construction put by the Court on the proviso and challenged before us by Shri Wad in C. A. 2007 of 1969 and by Shri Tarkunde in C. A. 129 and 1968.