LAKSHMIDHAR MISRA Vs. RANGALAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal is concerned with the legal status of two parcels of land comprising 3-90 acres in all in the village of Byree, Killa Darpan, district Cuttack, Orissa. These two parcels, which may conveniently be referred to aw "the disputed area," are themselves part of a plot No.1990-2401 in the same village, the plot lying to the west of the Bengal-Nagpur railway line which intersects the village. The documents in this case, not excluding the judgments, do not make it always an easy task to determine whether the whole plot No.1990-2401 is not more properly the subject of dispute than that portion of it which is described as the disputed area. In fact all the relevant evidence bears as much upon the status of the larger as of the smaller area. However that may be, the appellants' case is that the disputed area must be recognised in law as a cremation ground of the village and that, it being so, no part of the site can be made available for the purposes of private industry. The respondents Rangalal, Lachminarayan and Balu Ram, on the other hand, maintain that the disputed area has been validly granted to them or some of them by the Zamindar of the Killa Darpan estate arid that they are entitled to occupy the site for the purposes of a rice mill which at the date of the institution of the suit they were proceeding to erect upon it.

(2.) IN the first Court, the Court of the Munsiff of Jajpur, questions were raised as to the form of the suit and as to whether the necessary parties were before the Court. Issues were framed with regard to these points. The learned Munsiff decided these issues in favour of the appellants, who were plaintiffs in the suit. Neither of the intervening Courts expressed any disagreement with his holding on these issues, and no point with regard to them was pressed in argument before, their Lordships. It may be taken therefore that the appellants, of whom the third is in fact the owner of an existing rice mill in the same village, are entitled to maintain the suit in a representative capacity on behalf of the villagers and that the suit is not defective in form by reason of the non-joinder of the Zamindar or of the Collector.

(3.) BUT, apart from this, the conclusion at which the learned Subordinate Judge arrived with his finding that there had been dedication or lost grant is on the face of it defective in law. These are words of art in English law and the learned Judge does not explain how they can be invoked to determine rights in India and yet released from their essential terms. He may have been right in the result in thinking that the respondents were in the wrong. That must be considered later. BUT if the legal doctrines of English law, on which dedication and lost grant depend, are to be resorted to for the purpose of settling the disputes of this Indian village, then the learned Judge was wrong in decreeing the appellants' suit. It is essentially a suit to establish the rights of the villagers in the disputed area. No one claimed or spoke of the land as subject to the rights of the general public nor indeed would it be easy to give a meaning to such a conception as applied to a cremation ground in a particular village. BUT dedication is only known to English law as something equivalent to an irrevocable licence granted by the owner of soil to the use of the public. Dedication of a piece of land to a limited section of the public, such as the inhabitants of a village, is a claim unknown in law, and evidence limited to such special user would not justify a finding of dedication (see Poole v. Huskinson (1843) 11 M. & W. 827 Hildreth v. Adamson (1860) 8 C. B. (N. S.) 587 and Vestry of Bermondsey v. Brown (1865) L. R. 1 Eq. 204) Much the same result might well be achieved by the creation of a charitable trust binding the land, but that is not dedication nor is it in question here. At no stage of the hearing is there any record of a claim that the village community constitutes a corporation administering a trust for some classes of its inhabitants, nor was any such argument advanced before their Lordships.