THIRUGNANAM Vs. KAMALAMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AN oft-repeated question whether there was a lease on agricultural land or whether there was a licence granted to the licensee to pluck the fruits of the trees arises in this Writ Petition.

(2.) THE petitioner is the owner of the land of an extent of about 11 acres and 16 cents situate in Rangiam village, Udayarpalayam Taluk, Trichy District. According to the petitioner, the land is a thope comprising cashewnut, mango and jack fruit trees and also other miscellaneous trees of all kinds and the trees were already grown up and they yielded usufruct without any personal exertion on the part of those maintaining it and no personal labour involving muscular energy was needed for the said trees to yield the usufruct. According to the petitioner, the petitioner and his brothers were in enjoyment thereof by plucking and collecting the fruits of the trees every year and utilising the same partly for their consumption and mostly for sale. According to the petitioner, in or about the year 1978, when the petitioner's father was alive, he transferred by way of licence the use and enjoyment of the usufruct of the said trees to the first respondent and accordingly, an agreement was entered into on 17.8.1978 by the father of the petitioner with the first respondent herein and the terms of the document will be noticed later. THE first respondent, on the basis of the document claimed that she was a cultivating tenant which was negatived by the Tahsildar. THE first respondent then preferred an appeal before the Revenue Divisional Officer, Ariyalur and the Revenue Divisional Officer allowed the appeal and held that the name of the first respondent should be included in the Register of final Record of Tenancy rights in respect of the land in dispute. THEre was a revision before the District Revenue Officer, Trichy. THE District Revenue Officer passed his order on 26.8.1990 confirming the order of the third respondent. THE petitioner has challenged the order of the District Revenue Officer, Trichy dated 26.8.1990 confirming the order of the third respondent and prayed to quash the said order.

(3.) BEFORE considering the arguments advanced by the learned counsel for the parties, it is necessary to refer to the decisions relied upon by the learned counsel for the parties. In Munian Muthuraja v. Rajarathinam (1960 (II) M.LJ. 475 = 73 L.W. 329), Ananthanarayanan, J. (as His Lordships then was) considered the question of a person's right in taking a lease of usufruct alone and the learned Judge held that the person could be regarded as a cultivating tenant. Learned Judge laid down the following test and came to the conclusion that the lessee should be regarded as a cultivating tenant. "The lessee will necessarily have to provide the minimum care for the plantation, and so long as we may take judicial notice of this fact, he would certainly be a person engaged in "cultivation" within the meaning of the Act. Otherwise, the result would be the patently fallacious and absurd one, that in every case, the application of the definition would depend upon oral evidence as to the kind of manual labour employed by the lessee. It is not pretended that cashew trees, being organic growth, can subsist by themselves without the necessary minimum care, such as watering, etc. In the case of a lease, it is obviously the lessee in occupation who will be providing this minimum care".