VICTOR FERNANDEZ Vs. FRANCIS FERNANDEZ ALBERT FERNANDES

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question put to us by the bench of three Judges that was hearing this appeal was whether Pandarapattom lands (otherwise known as pandaravakapattom or sirkarpattom lands) of the Travancore area not falling within clause (iii) of the inclusive limb of the definition of, "estate" in Art.31A(2) (a) of the Constitution, were estates within the meaning of the definition -- with regard to lands that fall within the clause, there could, of course, be no doubt, and that must have been why the question was so framed. On the 17th November 1970, we answered this question in the affirmative. We did not then give our reasons. We do so now.

(2.) The definition reads thus:

(3.) The argument before us has proceeded, on all hands, on the footing that before the issue of what is known as the Royal Proclamation of 1040 ME. by the Maharaja of Travancore, the holders of Pandarapattom lands -- what the term means is lands held on Pandarapattom and what is really material is the nature of the holding -- were mere tenants at will having no proprietary rights whatsoever in the land, the full proprietary rights vesting in the Sirkar or the Government as distinguished from the Maharaja in his personal capacity. (This is quite in keeping with what is stated in paragraph 9 of the Settlement Proclamation of 1061 ME., namely, that those lands were originally the absolute property of Government, the tenants being mere tenants at will, but that, by the Royal Proclamation of 1040, Government generously waived all right to those lands and declared them to be the private, heritable, saleable, property of the holders. But it is not quite in keeping with the observations of Rajagopala Ayyangar J. in Purushothaman v. State of Kerala AIR 1962 SC 694 at page 714, where, as a matter of construction of the Proclamation of 1040, his Lordship said that the Proclamation speaks of the relinquishment or withdrawal or the right of the State and not of the conferment of a right on the ryot so as to render the ryot a grantee from the State, just in line with the Hindu Law theory of the proprietorship of the soil vesting in the occupant cultivator). We are of the view that if, as held in Govindaru Nambooripad v. State,1962 KLT 913, the lands in question are not caught by the body of the definition as answering the local equivalent of the expression, "estate", they can hardly escape the claws of clause (ii) of the inclusive limb of the definition as lands held under ryotwari settlement.