THE STATE OF MADRAS REPRESENTED BY THE COMMISSIONER, HINDU RELIGIOUS AND CHARITABLE ENDOWMENTS Vs. KRISHNASWAMI AND ANR. (MINORS REPRESENTED BY THEIR MOTHER AND NEXT FRIEND, KALIAMMAL)

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE State of Madras represented by the Commissioner of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board, the defendant in O.S. No. 102 of 1957 on the file of the Subordinate Judge of Coimbatore, is the Appellant in this appeal. In Ikkarai Bolu vampatti Village of the Coimbatore District there is a temple of the deity Angalamman. The plaintiffs in the suit claim to be the hereditary trustees of the temple. The Deputy Commissioner of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board negatived the plaintiff's prayer for declaration about their hereditary trusteeship. Their appeal to the Commissioner of the Board was also dismissed. Then they filed a suit before the learned Subordinate Judge of Coimbatore under Section 62 of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act for the necessary declaration about their hereditary trusteeship after setting aside the orders adverse to them passed by the Deputy Commissioner and the Commissioner of the Board. The defendant contested the claim.

(2.) THE trial Court found on a consideration of the evidence, that the plaintiffs' claim was established and gave the declaration prayed for. Hence this appeal by the defendant. The point for determination in this appeal is whether the plaintiffs are the hereditary trustees of the suit temple and whether they are entitled to a declaration to that effect.

(3.) DECISIONS have laid down that from mere fact of trusteeship being held by a family hereditarily for 3 or 4 generations, an inference that the trusteeship was hereditary in character cannot be drawn as an invariable conclusion. In the well -known case of Madana Palo v. H.R.E. Board, Madras : AIR1938Mad98 , there was proof that the office of trusteeship was held by the appellant's family for four successive generations and there was no suggestion that the trusteeship had ever been held outside the appellants' family. But in this case there is ground for the positive inference, that before 1916, plaintiffs' family had nothing to do with the trusteeship and that they enjoyed the trusteeship only subsequently. The same principle is reiterated in a decision of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Muniswami Mudali v. Kanniah Naidu, (1954) 2 M.L.J. 42 (Andhra), where at page 44, it is pointed out that in that case the members of the plaintiffs' family held the office of trusteeship for at least three generations and there was no evidence to show that any member of the public outside these families held the office of trustee of these institutions.