PONNIA PILLAI AND ORS. Vs. PANNAI MINOR SIVANUPANDIA THEVAR THROUGH HIS BROTHER AND GUARDIAN, R.K. VISWANATHA THEVAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE Letters Patent Appeals arise out of a decision of Shahabuddin, J., in a batch of second appeals concerning a number of plots situated in a large block of village site claimed to be the property of the minor plaintiff. The appellants are the defendants. One Sivanupandia Thevar,. who died in 1897 was the owner of an estate known as " the Pannai estate " which is alleged to comprise amongst other things the western portion of S. No. 340, which is part of the village site or gramanatham. He left three daughters, Muthammal, who died in 1924, Ponnammal who seems to have died before 1909 and Madipillai, Ammal who died in 1928. Ponnammal had a daughter who also died long ago leaving a son Murugiah Thevar. In 1927, there was a partition of the estate between Madipillai Ammal, Sangathal, the daughter of the deceased Muthammal, and Murugiah, the grandson of the deceased Ponnammal. By the partition arrangement the property with which we are now concerned was handed over to Murugiah Thevar. A curious factor in this case is that it was the practice of the ladies who, enjoyed this estate to give it on lease to a lessee called the kattukuthagaidar who will be referred to hereafter as the intermediate lessee. He paid a lump sum rent both for the privilege of cultivating the cultivable lands and also for the privilege of collecting the rents from the various house sites comprised in the village site number. But the occupants of, these house sites were given leases in the name of one or more of the actual proprietors so that they were not sub -lessees of the intermediate lessee who collected the rents. After this partition arrangement had been made, the surviving daughter of Sivanupandia Thevar, Madipillai Ammal adopted her daughter's son, the plaintiff, who was then a young child and after making this adoption she died sometime in 1928.

(2.) THE legal position at the time of her death was that the property with which we are now concerned was held by Murugiah under a partition arrangement which was good so long as Madipillai Ammal was alive but would not bind the plaintiff as the reversioner of the estate of his adopted mother's father. It was however sometime before the plaintiff's protectors realised the necessity for taking action. Eventually the District Court appointed a guardian for the minor plaintiff and in 1932 a suit was filed against Murugiah and Sangathal, the daughter of the eldest sister Muthammal, claiming recovery of the estate. In this suit, the tenants of the house sites were not impleaded as parties, but the intermediate lessee was. The suit was decreed in 1935.

(3.) THE suits in which the plaintiff claims to recover possession from all those various defendants were undoubtedly filed on the footing that the defendants held the properties as tenants holding over on the termination of teases granted by the estate of which the plaintiff was the proprietor. It is in fact difficult to establish this case, though it was found to have been established so far as most of the lands are concerned by the trial Court and the first appellate Court. If in fact Murugiah was denying the plaintiff's title and the defendants were after 1928 holding under Murugiah by paying rent to him through his agent and if from 1932 onwards they were paying rent to nobody at all, there is an obvious difficulty in holding that the defendants were tenants holding over on the termination of oral leases from the plaintiff or his predecessor. It is not as if the plaintiff is claiming as the successor of Murugiah. His claim is based on the assertion that Murugiah was after the death of the limited owner a trespasser ; and though no doubt by the success of the suit against Murugiah, the plaintiff would become entitled to evict any persons whom Murugiah had let into possession that would not be on the footing that he was their landlord but on the footing that their landlord was a person who had no title. We are therefore not convinced of the soundness of the view that all the leases, oral or otherwise, given by Murugiah must on or after the date of the plaintiff's decree be deemed to be leases given by the plaintiff.