(1.) THIS is a petition by the plaintiffs in O.S. No. 305 of 1945 (District Munsiff's Court, Tirupati) for a temporary injunction restraining the respondents who are the defendants in the suit from interfering in any manner with the free and uninterrupted flow of water from the plaint channel to the petitioners' lands. The suit was filed for a declaration that plaintiffs 2 to 7 are entitled exclusively to the supply of water from the suit channel and for a permanent injunction restraining the defendants from interfering with that supply and from taking away water from that channel in its course towards their lands. An application for a temporary injunction was made in the trial Court and the District Munsiff who had granted an ad interim injunction made that injunction absolute on 14th December, 1946, in I .A. No. 821 of 1945. The defendants in the suit had filed I.A. No. 894 of 1945 to set aside the interim injunction and that petition wad dismissed. Appeals were taken to the District Court, Chittoor, against the orders of the District Munsiff and in C.M.A. Nos. 17 and 18 of 1946, the District Judge practically cancelled the order of injunction although he described his order as an order modifying the District Munsiff's order. What all was done by the appellate Court was to require the defendants to deposit a sum of Rs. 300 in the trial Court as security for damages, should they be eventually unable to prove their case. This is how the learned Judge wound up his order:
(2.) BEFORE going into the merits of the case I must take note of a preliminary objection that was raised by Mr. Chakrapani Naidu to the maintainability of the petition. He contended, rather ingeniously, that no relief by way of a temporary injunction can be given by this Court in a civil revision petition. He referred to Section 107 of the Code of Civil Procedure which provides that an appellate Court should have the same powers and shall perform as nearly as may be the same duties as are conferred and imposed by the Code on Courts of original jurisdiction in respect of suits instituted therein, and he argued that in exercise of those powers and duties the appellate Court may grant a temporary injunction or a relief of that character. Under Section 115, which deals with the powers of a Court of Revision it was contended that no such power was vested and that the only order that could be passed under that section was a final order on the revision petition. He then referred to Section 141 which enacts that the procedure provided in the Code in regard to suits shall be followed, as far as it can be made applicable, in all proceedings in any Court of civil jurisdiction and argued that that section has been held by this Court to be inapplicable to such cases. For this position he relied upon two decisions none of which seems to be apt. The first is the decision of Patanjali Sastri, J., sitting singly, in Rama Kurup v. : (1942)2MLJ99 . where the learned Judge merely stated that a civil revision petition that was filed in this Court could not be returned as it cannot be presented as a civil revision petition to a District Court and that for that purpose Section 141 of the Code was unavailable. The second case is Sadaya Padayachi v. : AIR1935Mad609 which only decided that Section 141 does not confer a right of appeal when no such right otherwise has been given, since Section 141 deals only with procedure, whereas the right of appeal is a substantive right which has to be expressly conferred. Cases that are more germane to the question at issue are the two Full Bench decisions of this Court reported as Chappan v. : (1898)8MLJ231 and Chidambara Nadar v. : AIR1937Mad385 Before referring to these cases a passage may be extracted from Story which throws a flood of light on this matter:
(3.) COMING to the merits of the case, I have already indicated that the order of the learned District Munsiff is sound and that he has considered the matter in a proper judicial bearing, while the order of the District Judge has proceeded, at least partly, upon extra -judicial considerations. The fact so far as this matter is con - , cerned, are fairly simple. The channel A.B. according to the Commissioner's plan, takes off at A from the river Aruna and at £ it enters the lands belonging to plaintiffs 2 to 7 and irrigates a very large expanse of two thousand kuntahs (6 kuntahs : one acre) of registered wet land belonging to them. It is supplemented by another source coming from a place marked D in the same plan which is called the Kasam. The plaintiffs claim an exclusive right to both these sources of supply. The defendants own about 100 kuntahs south of the channel A.B. and their lands are registered as dry or as Manavari which means rainfed. The fact that the lands are registered as dry or rainfed clearly shows that they are not entitled to any registered source of water supply. There are a number of wells and such cultivation as was going on, it is urged by the plaintiffs, was from water from those wells. The learned District Munsiff has taken into account in granting the temporary injunction a number of documents, including the Jamabandi Chitta accounts for faslis 1279, 1302, ,1311 and 1313. He has also examined the adangal accounts and pattas of Aranyam Khandriga and from a scrutiny of the documentary evidence in the case he has come to the conclusion that prima facie this is a fit matter in which a temporary injunction should be granted in favour of the plaintiffs as prayed for.