MUNIA SERVAI Vs. THANGAYYA ONTURIYAR AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) MR . Viswanatha Sastri, learned advocate for the respondents, raises an objection in famine against the admissibility of this application for stay of delivery of possession of the disputed lands to the respondents and for continuance of the lands in possession of the village Munsiff any further. His argument is that this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain such a petition, since the only provision of law upon which it could possibly be founded, viz., Section 561 -A Criminal Procedure Code does not confer any new or additional powers on this Court and this Court has no inherent power to appoint a Receiver in proceedings that come up under Section 145, Criminal Procedure Code in revision before it. For this position reliance is placed on the decision of a Bench of this Court in Marudayya Thevar v. : AIR1926Mad139 . There an application was made asking this Court to appoint a Receiver pending disposal of an application to revise an order passed by the Magistrate under Section 145, Criminal Procedure Code. The learned Judges constituting the Bench held that the High Court has no jurisdiction to entertain such a petition pending disposal of a Criminal Revision Petition. A further contention was pressed before the Bench that this Court has all the powers that the Magistrate has got in the enquiry under Section 145, Criminal Procedure Code. This contention was repelled with the following observations :

(2.) ANOTHER point of distinction may perhaps be that, as it appears from the judgment in the Bench case, the respondent had been already put in possession of the property, whereas in the present case the village Munsiff still continues in possession thereof. The real position is that the respondents were deprived of possession on the 24th September, 1946, when the village Munsiff was appointed by the Court to take possession of the lands and to harvest the crops. Mr. Venkatarama Sastri concedes that if the Bench decision is applicable to the facts of the case, the preliminary objection has to prevail; but he endeavoured to distinguish it on the ground already stated.

(3.) IN this view I have not gone further into the merits of the case and into the various questions involved, viz., about the occupancy rights of the respondents, the nature of the regrant to the petitioner's vendor, etc.