HARSHADRAI N DESAI Vs. COLLECTOR OF SURAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner is an Inamdar of the Inam village known as Khurvel in the Chikhli Taluka, Surat District. On 27-11-1822 the Government of India granted a sanad to one Ferozshah Dhunji-shah in respect of six villages of which the village of Khurvel was one. On 27-5-1918 one Dullabhaj Haribhai Desai purchased the right, title and interest of Perozshah in this village of Khurvel and the petitioner is the descendant of Dullabhai. The Personal Inams Abolition Act of 1952 came into force on 13-6-1953- By this Act all personal mams were extinguished including the exemption granted to any person from payment of land revenue. But Section 4 of the Act provided that where the amount of exemption was or exceeded Rs. 5. 000/- the inam was to be extinguished from 1-8-1953 and in other cases from 1-8-1955. _ the State of Bombay took the view that the petitioner's inam was extinguished from 1-8-1953. The petitioner's contention was that the sanad with regard to the village of Khurvel exempted him from payment of land revenue In a sum which is less than Rs. 5,000/- and therefore under the provisions of the Act his inam could only be extinguished on 1-8-1955 and not from 1-3-1953. As the State refused to accept this contention, the petitioner has come before us.

(2.) IT may be pointed out that in the correspondence between the first respondent, the Collector of Surat, and the petitioner, the attitude taken up by the Collector was that inasmuch as the land revenue payable in respect of the six villages exceeded Rs. 5,000/- and as the sanad was in respect of the six villages, the petitioner was not entitled to the exemption provided with regard to payment of land revenue which was Jess than Rs. 5,000/ -. That contention is obviously Untenable in view of the decisions of this Court, because it is not disputed that as far as the petitioner is concerned he is only interested in the village of Khurvel and the petitioner's share in the land revenue which he is exempted from paying is Rs. 734-9-0. Realising this position the Collector, when he came to make an affidavit in answer to the petition, has taken up an entirely different attitude and his contention is that the sanad granted to Ferozshah Dhunjishah when properly construed amounts to a grant of the soil and not an exemption from payment of land revenue, and he contends that if this is a grant of the soil of the village then the petitioner's case cannot fall under Section 4 (ii) (b ). Therefore, the question that we have to address ourselves to is as to what is the true construction of the sanad Which was granted to Perozshah.

(3.) THE sanad bestows upon Perozshah the undermentioned six villages in the Sirkar of Surat of the present total annual revenue to the Company's Government of Rs. 11,416/- in Jaghir as maintenance to him and his heirs general in perpetuity from the beginning of the month of September 1822 and what is strongly urged by Mr. Desai on behalf of the State of Bombay is that these are words of the conveyance and what is conveyed is the villages and therefore the grant is the grant of the soil. But this bestowal of the villages is upon certain conditions and the conditions are mentioned, and those conditions are that Perozshah shall during his life enjoy and derive the entire produce of the jamabundy collection of the said village be they more or less and after the demise of the said Perozshah the heirs of Perozshah shall render to Government two-thirds of whatever may be collected from the aforesaid villages and the heirs shall themselves enjoy the other one-third. Now, the sanad must be construed as a whole and when we read the sanad as a whole it is clear that what was given to Perozshah was the entire produce of the Jamabundy collection of the village. The produce of the village was not given to him and even with regard to his heirs what they got under the sanad was one-third of the land revenue. One would naturally expect, if this was a grant of the soil, a fuller description of the villages, the rights in land, in water, in mines etc. But except for a bald description of the villages, nothing else is mentioned in the sanad, land what is emphasised Is that the grantee, so long as he is alive, shall get the whole of the land revenue and after him his successors will get one-third of the land revenue. In our opinion, the sanad does not purport to bestow upon peroashah the important right of the grant in the soil of the village but merely exemption from land revenue.