KESAVAN Vs. ANTONY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Revision petitioners are the defendants in 40 Small Cause Suits on the file of the Additional Munsiff, Trichur. All the suits are by a contractor against cultivators for charges for bailing out water from paddy fields.

(2.) There are four blocks of paddy fields known as Eastern Karimpadam, Western Karimpadam, Ponnamutha and Thuruthithazam lying contiguous to one another in the Trichur and Chowghat taluks. While Ponnamutha is over 600 acres each of the others is about 200 acres in extent. Paddy can be cultivated in these lands only after bailing out water from them. Bailing out of water from any of these blocks was impossible without the cooperation of the owners of the other blocks. But in 1137 M-E. the inner ridges of one of the blocks, Western Karimpadam, were strengthened and elevated and thereafter water could be bailed out from that block independently, but as regards the other three blocks interdependence still prevailed.

(3.) It is the block of paddy fields called Eastern Karimpadam that is involved in these Revision Petitions. The cultivators there acted in cooperation. They met and elected a committee and the committee got the work of bailing out water done through the plaintiff. At a stretch the contract was always being given for a period of three years. For the years 1134, 1135 and 1136 when the work was entrusted to him the terms were reduced to writing. Ext. P1 is the document evidencing the contract.