VYANKATESH DHONDDEY DESHPANDE Vs. SOU KUSM DATTATRAYA KULKARNI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two appeals involve an interesting question regarding the validity of an auction sale of the suit lands which originally belonged to the joint family of the respondents and Dattatray Govind Kulkarani, the husband of respondent No. 1 and the father of respondents 2 to 6, and which were allotted at a partition made prior to the auction sale which was held for recovering the Tagai loan advanced in respect of other land belonging to the family to the said Dattatray.

(2.) The allegations made by the respondent-plaintiffs can be briefly summarised as under:-

(3.) Plaintiff No. 1 is the wife and plaintiffs Nos. 2 to 6 are the sons of Dattatray Govind Kulkurani. Plaintiff No. 1 happens to be the second wife of Dattatray and plaintiffs Nos. 2 and 3, who were minors when the suit was filed, are her sons from Dattatray. Plaintiffs Nos. 4 to 6 are the sons of Dattatray from his first wife. A partition was effected by Dattatray with a view to avoid future disputes under a registered partition deed, Exh, 79, on July 6, 1956. Under the said partition deed, the father, Dattatray, took Survey No. 140/1, admeasuring 10 acres and 1 guntha and assessed at Rs. 27-9-0, in which the joint family has a one-fourth undivided share, and the remaining land, Survey No, 487, was allotted to the plaintiffs in equal shares and it is the shares in the Survey No, 487 which are the subject-matter of the suit filed by the plaintiffs. It was alleged that the shares were partitioned equally by metes and bounds and the respective shares were handed over to each of the plaintiffs at the time of the execution of the partition deed and since that time the ownership of each one had become independent and mutation was also effected in the names of the plaintiffs showing their respective hares in the suit land in the Record of Rights. The shares were also separately assessed to land revenue.